Look at the chaos the world is plunging into with all these wars and disasters. I think we are approaching the point where humanity will begin to rediscover horses as a mode of transportation and radio as the only means of communication beyond the line of sight.
Vast, really vast territories of the Mongol Empire were conquered by horsemen so I wouldn't say it's bad. In contrary, infinite advance of Alexander the Great was in fact stopped with elephant riders. Sure one would say he won Battle of the Hydaspes where elephants were engaged but anyway soon he turned back. So I'd vote for elephants. It is indescribable feeling of being mounted on the elephant's neck. You may wish to hug the elephant, but it is so big that you feel yourself a miserable nothing against it's greatness. Still the elephant allows you to ask it to move in the direction you'd wish to, so from some point of view you're riding it almost like you'd ride the horse. I don't believe fiber optics will cease their existence in foreseen future. Still towards Australia yes, it looks pretty much like HF landmobile radio is the real thing. One from out in the outback where there is nothing at all may place a call to someone else right from the car or from a humpy, isn't it great? This is not amateur radio tech, but hams tend to adopt whatever crap like ALE, DMR, and so on. Even CW, never amateur but truly commercial & military mode, was adopted by early ham nation and still exists among us while extinct in the wild. Radio is just great, especially the hobby.
For fun, I ran a search on my wife's Hometown - Delta, UT. POP 3,622 in 2020 census. Small town. The county has a listed population of 13, 164 as of 2021. This town is in the (Ut) West Desert area on the border with NV. I found a listing of local operators - Hams in DELTA, UT | N8CIA Ham Search (US ONLY) This shows 48 licenses mostly in Delta, with several outdated listings. The important bit -- None of the licenses I checked show an active QRZ page. Not one. I'm thinking social media for ham radio isn't going to help.
Licensing should be about power level only. Every licence grade hould have full access to every band and mode with the only restriction being on power.., since power runs a safety risk only.
Well actually power runs RFI risk as well so a licensee has to proof one is skilled enough to avoid RFI caused by one's equipment. That's probably why local authorities may decide they should restrict some let's say RFI vulnerable portions or entire bands from being accessed by newies. Otherwise yes I do agree especially since some actual restrictions have no real sense like and seem to be legacy of analog TV era or smth else similar.