ORIGINAL: mscic-RCU
If your club requires you to be a member, then it is the club's requirement and not the AMA.
This is incorrect. If your club is chartered with the AMA, all flyers, members and guests, are required by the club charter with the AMA to be members of the AMA. In the event that something would happen, the club's insurance is invalid if the incident involves a non-AMA member. If the AMA is not a monopoly, why did it go to such extremes to put the old Sport Flyers association out of business a few years ago? As I have said many times before, most clubs can not afford to purchase liability insurance on their own for their flying sites, therefore they charter with the AMA. The AMA had a captive audience until park flyers came along. Maybe now we don't need them as much!
Your telling us the original statement (above) is incorrect! Then you go on to state that the club charter requires you to be a member of the AMA. The club therefore chooses affiliation with the AMA, and to do so, must enforce membership in the AMA for flyers using it's field. The AMA's cadre doesn't enforce this rule at the membership level, the individual clubs do. I have never felt I am forced to be a member of the AMA, I choose to be a member. I chose to be a member of the AMA and not a member of the Sport Flyers Asso.
So, who requires you to be a member of the AMA?
Also, define what a monopoly is.