You're describing more of a racing bike. My commuter / tourer (Surly DT) has Conti touring tires, 60psi. Those tires actually have a thin steel belt embedded. Stopped a few sharp objects from puncturing the tubes over the last couple of years. Of course, you won't win any races on my set up but I do get from point A to B reliably.

You are probably right. I "cut the cord" over year ago and knocked my monthly entertainment bill down to $70 from $150. It was a tough at first. I've been a cable subscriber for over 20 years, always automatically subscribing to the service every time I moved without even thinking about the money. Once I considered the cost to the number of channels I actually watched ratio, it just didn't make any financial sense. So I decided to try cord cutting (a misnomer really). I also installed an antenna outdoors to get the local channels. I did miss a few channels at first, but it didn't take long to ween myself off. If I can't watch a particular show or can't get a particular channel, then it's not the that big of a deal. The media company just won't have me as a source of advertising dollars. Their loss, not mine.

And if what you say comes true with streaming services, then so be it. I'll just find other things to do. The big thing for me has been certain sports but I even found that I can live without that and just check the score and watch the highlights from a website. You ask why bother cutting cable; I ask why bother getting it in the first place.

Actually, see here. Also, amateur radio bands exist in almost all parts of the spectrum from HF up to UHF but taken collectively it doesn't amount to much when compared to the whole spectrum.