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Orbdev Files US Federal Suit Over Asteroid Claim
chongo writes "Orbital
Development has
filed
legal action against the United States by filing a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in Federal Court.
After NASA's NEAR
probe landed
on the
asteroid
433 Eros,
Gregory W. Nemitz,
who
claims
to have owned the asteroid since the 3rd of March 2000,
sent NASA an $20 invoice for the
first 100 years of parking and storage fees.
NASA told him to "pound
sand".
OrbDev's
Eros
Project seeks to promote their ludicrous ideas about property rights in
space."
Let me start out by saying that I don't think this guy has it right...he sounds like a real looney! But the fact remains that we *must* start thinking about how to establish property rights as we settle outerspace, otherwise we won't be able to have a sustainable society. The right to own property is the foremost right of every person and should be defended above all these other "rights" like the right to welfare and non-descrimination. This may seem funny or trivial to you, but if you would think about these kind of issues for a few minutes (maybe read a book about objectivism) you would take this a lot more seriously.
The linux hacker
Every one knows that they have to put a ticket on the windshield first!
C'mon, mod me up - It's funny!
Let's come a little bit closer to "super-routine" (read: daily) space flights before we even think about giving people the (recognized) right to claim property in outer space.
To think about it now would be like a caveman contemplating if he should choose an AMD or Intel processor. We're so far off, it would be somewhat of a waste of time to argue about it now.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
There are a lot of people who would argue with you that the concept of property rights is the biggest problem with western society.
I personally don't like the idea of property rights in space as we all know who will get the lion's share of them to everybody else's disadvantage.
Sorry, wrong story. You're thinking of the Heinlein classic The Man Who Sold the Moon , not Stranger in a Strange Land .
Once we can effectively enter outer space, and get energy and materials from there, what use are property rights? I'm serious. We can generate more than enough wealth to keep everyone happy, and I don't buy that nonsense that if people aren't paid they won't work (explain OSS to me then). It would be a very different society than we have now, but certainly a better one.
On the other hand, if we don't somehow artifically separate people into 'rich', 'middle class' and 'poor', the wealthy won't be able to use their superior command of society's resources to steer things in whatever direction they see fit. Frankly I think that's a good thing, but naturally wealthy people disagree. Viewed in this light, I can see why a complex system of property rights for outer space would be advantagous.
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How do you define it if not for a convoluted form of "mine! wanna buy?".
The right to own property is the foremost right of every person and should be defended above all these other "rights"...
Thank you Ayn Rand.
Now let's get real. Property is not inherent. Moreover, the subject of what can and cannot be property is a limited one; slavery is a form of property that was once legally recognized but is no longer in most parts of the world.
What is inherent is life and liberty. Working from these one can derive certain forms of legitimate property, i.e., a presumed legal right to exclusive possession of things one creates, lest he or she be deprived of the labor (life and liberty interest) invested in its creation.
Now tell me, sir, when and how did you make the asteroid you now claim to own?
Peace and love, y'all
Bzzzzzt.
You'd better leave America (along with Western civilization, and virtually all religion) behind if you think owning property comes before "welfare" - which, in non-reactionary terminology, means efforts by men, through their governments, to help other men - and before "non-discrimination" - which means recognition of equal humanity and everything that flows from it: equal rights, due process, life and liberty, and all those other things Ayn Rand couldn't imagine living without.
Sigh. It takes a fairly well-developed industrial society to produce people with such effective blinders that they mistake their surroundings for the state of nature.
Lemme quote ya yer holy prophetess: I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
Say goodbye to the human race, then. Recognition of human inequality - intellectual, yes, but more importantly economic and social - is a bedrock principle of human morality, as is the value of efforts to rectify inequality. Abandonment of virtue is tantamount to abnegation of one's own humanity; and "self-reliance" (a meaningless idea, given the sociopolitical state in which humans inevitably find themselves) at another's expense is no virtue.
Besides, even if he did "own" it, does the paltry price he is charging just a sign that he's only trying to be a pain in NASA's ass?
Nope. I bet he's trying to get a gov't agency to "recognize" his claim by paying the invoice.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You settle outerspace the same way the Europeans "settled" the rest of the world... a guy sails on a ship to the beach and plants a flag and says, "I claim this land in the name of Spain." What's so hard to figure out? Real Politik, people, you get to own "new" land if you can hold it.
Once a governmental entity holds land then it can enforce the property rights of it's citizens by going to war locally to enforce remote claims. IE: War on Earth to assert property claims in space... War in Europe to assert property claims in the Americas.
I swear you scifi people never paid attention to your history classes.
[signature]
From Article 1
From Article 11In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
While "real" capital is necessary for capitalism to function - that is you need clear property ownership rights - I doubt anyone who has never been in space could lay such a claim. If the property cannot be visited, traded, or borrowed against then it isn't really property or capital at all is it?
(FYI: this is why many 3rd world countries who try capitalism don't do that well, or at least part of the reason. In the western world it is so ingrained that we don't even think about it, but I can buy a house and be reasonably sure that I own the property and will continue to do so. I can take out a small business loan against it. I can sell it and make money. Imagine living somewhere where you can't necessarily get a clean title to anything. Imagine it takes years, thousands of dollars, and visiting hundreds of government offices to setup a legitimate business due to all the red tape. We are fortunate enough to have clear property rights established. Our capital is legitimately moveable and that's what makes it work.)
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I think this is why space is so big. So the idiots don't get out and annoy everyone else. If a civilization is still arguing over silly stuff like this, it won't have time to advance.
Incredible. The universe is idiot-proof.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
On the other hand, the more platinum available, the lower the price gets.
Martin
I live in the netherlands, where we do have a captialistic/socialistic system, and it seems to be the best solution available at the moment.
Doesn't mean it's a good system, it's the least bad.
I'd prefer a system without the concept of money with people working because of the intellectual challenges, not because of the money, but I don't see a workable implementation of such a system in the near future, the problem is there will always be people too lazy to work if they won't get paid.
What needs to be done is that technology has to advance to such a stadium that working is optional, everything should be automated except for the fun stuff (like inventing new things).
I'd prefer a system without the concept of money with people working because of the intellectual challenges.
So, what EXACTLY are the intellectual challenges of refuse collection, to give one example.
"Information wants to be paid"
The only reason that's true is because everything on Earth has already been pointed at by someone who said "Mine !".
Pointing doesn't give you property, but nor do physical markers, government laws, planetary authorizations, galactic leases or anything else.
Your property is what you can hold on to, and anything else is just hot air and handwaving.
Hot air and handwaving aren't necessarily worthless, because after all they reduce the pain and suffering in what we loosely call civilization, but to believe that rights have any fundamental substance is simply a delusion. The fact that those delusions are often imposed by force just proves the point.
It all boils down to what you can defend, and nothing more.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I'd prefer a system without the concept of money with people working because of the intellectual challenges, not because of the money, but I don't see a workable implementation of such a system in the near future, the problem is there will always be people too lazy to work if they won't get paid.
You hit the nail on the head. The problem with your Star Trek ideal is that the human species isn't particularly nice. We're lazy, vindictive, greedy, argumentative, teratorial etc etc.
About thirty years ago comprehensive education was introduced in to the country. Before then there were graded schools so that you went to a school (11 - 16 years old) dependent upon how you did in an exam taken in primary/grade school. In comprehensive education the idea was that you were only graded in your subjects and everyone went to the same school. The idea was that the clever and hardworking students would pull up those other. In reality the reverse happened and generally students were dragged down to the lower common denominator. Even they guy who invented the system admits it doesn't work. The problem was that the assumption was that everyone would want to do well and work, the reality is that everyone is lazy and wants as much as they can for as little as they can get away with.
Ultimately ownership comes down to who has the bigger army.
If the head of the Mafia declared that he owned all of Chicago, and requested that everyone leave or be terrorized, the police would be dispatched. If the Mafia were sufficiently armed to hold off the police, then the military would be dispatched. In the USA it is a foregone conclusion that the military would win. Thus it is not disputed that US laws govern the territory called the USA. In the USA, citizens are allowed to own private property - in a democracy the citizens band together to fund said army for the common good (in theory).
The Poles probably had perfectly good property laws in the late 1930s - but it didn't due much to deter German trespassing. They didn't send in lawyers, they sent in tanks. Lawyers are only used by people who can't afford enough tanks to do the job (thankfully society has evolved to a point where this is usually the case).
Right now, if somebody could live independantly in space and laid claim to the Eros asteroid, nobody could do anything about it. Sure, somebody could file a claim in the UN, but nothing would stop you from just picking up the NASA probe and using it as scrap metal. No nation on Earth has a significant capability for prosecuting wars in space - yet.
I'm not saying this is how it should be - but this is how it always has been. The guy with the army makes the rules. Courts only have power because of the police. The UN only has power as long as its component nations are willing to supply troops. If you have a weak army, you had better make friends with somebody who has a strong army, and be prepared to pay for that friendship. If not, you won't be sovereign for long...
Property rights and freedom go hand in hand. If you are "against" pritate ownership of property, you are against freedom. Do you not realize that in order to "eliminate" private property, you must do so by force? Or would you actually try to argue that force -- the basic premise of all theft, fraud, rape, and murder -- is a "lesser evil" than private ownership of property?
Moreover, when government owns all property, it is really those who control government who own the property. These are individuals just like you and me, acting in self-interest like you and me. The only difference is that they hold the "right" to invoke force as a means to an end, and we don't.
And those lot of people are total idiots. You either have personal property rights, or you have the government exercising control of all the property.
The moment a government has the power to control the land you need for shelter, food and industry, that's the day that government can control every fundamental aspect of your life. They can tell you where to live, where to farm, where to work.
99.9% of the fools who argue against property rights are basically envious of some rich guy on the hill and either want him living in a trailer park out of spite, or they have some idiotic idea that with the government owning all the land, they'd be living in that house on the hill for free.
Sometimes I wish I could just send them all to a public housing project for six months.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I don't agree with the guy (I don't subscribe to the capitalist view that everything should be owned) but your reasoning is severely flawed...
...it would seem that the asteroid is NASA's...
And curiously, Mr Nimitz has no ability to evict the probe.
You don't need to evict anyone to claim property. If I, and my gang of armed aliens from outer space, came to your house and "took it over". There is no way you can evict me. My weapons are too strong. Evicting the probe (or me and my alien friends in this case) only applies if there are no laws. If we were all in a lawless earth, then what you are saying would apply.
Usually, the decision comes to some authority that handles property cases. WIth your house, I guess it lies with the municipal government (or some government). When it comes to countries, it usually lies with the UN. The question is, what about space? I don't think any entity handles space yet. I imagine it would likely fall within the UN.
Another fallacy there. I don't think anyone that lands gets the right, just like how USA doesn't own the moon just because it landed there, or how USA doesn't own Kuwait although its troops are protecting the monarchy and the country.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
This is easy: The USA (and the rest of the world) are unable to enforce any sort of laws off-planet, so eros 433 is out of their jurisdiction. If eros wants to get their money, they can damn well go to eros 433 and impound the probe for nonpayment.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Mr. Nemitz confuses domestic property law with international law, I think. If he had done a bit of reading up on the philosophy of law, he'd realize that governments are the only source of law in the international milieu where treaties are drafted.
You are precluded from laying claim to land in space because property rights come to citizens from their governments, Mr. Nemitz. You have no personal authority at law to lay claim to any "Terra Nullius" you may come across (unless you are the designated representative of a country who does have that authority). You can sit on that asteroid with a shotgun and keep people off by force, but in that case you have only possession, not title. When a state lays a claim to that asteroid (or states agree that no-one shall do so), they can enforce that law against your possession.
It will be interesting to see what the court has to say about this claim.
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
He, as a citizen, must follow the laws of this country.
As this country's constitution says treaties have full force of law, he's thus bound by it whether he signs or not.
The platinum ain't worth that. He's got to calculate the cost to actually extract and transport that material, and subtract it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If he is filing a claim in US Federal Court then he is asserting that the US has jurisdiction over the asteroid. If the US has jurisdiction over the asteroid then it must be part of the US. If it is part of the US then I believe the governement would have MANY means of claiming eminent domain, defined at that link:
Main Entry: eminent domain
Pronunciation: 'e-m&-n&nt- Function: noun
: the right of the government to take property from a private owner for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of its sovereignty over all lands within its jurisdiction
Come play Moral Decay!
Actually, there's a fairly big loophole...about 60 nations signed the Space Treaty, and the US didn't sign the one for the moon.
So, I move to Sealand and claim all planets and the moon, as well as all asteroids.
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