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."

Comments

Markers?

[chill]

Pointing to a bright light in the sky and saying "mine" doesn't make it so.

Did OrbDev fly up there to mark the boundaries of their claim? Somehow, I think not.

Good luck in enforcing that.

Re:Markers?

[Unordained]

I've already had dealings with Mr. Nemitz ...

As to aliens: without proof that they exist, he refuses to care. After all, without the indians/natives, who would have cared that europeans were invading a new continent? Therefore, he'll care when aliens actually complain that they owned it first. And then, he'll fight them. So he says.

As to his claim: he has declared that the UN treaty banning governments from laying claim to land in space only applies to governments, and that it has no bearing on individuals. The government's right to do anything comes from citizens, so this is the 'correct' order of things.

As to not laying foot on it: anything not already owned is deemed to be up for grabs to the first to think of it. A registry has been set up to allow people to state their claim against stars, planets, and other bodies floating in space. Our sun is already claimed, and I seem to remember there being a story about an exchange between the owner of the moon (or was it eros?) and that of the sun -- a bill was sent for the energy used, owner of the other body responded he didn't like the service and wanted it discontinued ... since this couldn't be done, the bill was cancelled.

Effectively, these people believe that their claim to these new territories is founded purely and simply in the lack of laws preventing it. Brute force will be required, they think, to say otherwise -- and they're already planning a galactic-level government (in the same shape as the UN) to help legitimize their claims and instruct counter-claims (and enforce their prior ownership, apparently.) Earth is outside its scope, for lack of proper representation. Everyone else is welcome to join, if they're a non-earth land (or gas?) owner.

Arguments will boil down to "but nothing says I can't, so, ha!" And that's where we ended the thread.

Re:We must establish private property in outerspac

[kfg]

I've read books about objectivism. I'm afraid I tend not to agree with it. Not that Ayn Rand ever really admited that anyone but her even understood it.

That alone tends to send up my red flags and move the needle of the bullshit meter at least a lot closer to the red zone.

Now please don't get me wrong. I'm anything but an anticapitalist and not against property rights, per se, but my ideas of such are rather more Thoreauian (who, counter to popular opinion, was a practicing capitalist and clearly would have thought a federal welfare system was a daft idea).

I think one must realize that property in the sense that you own the chair you whittled yourself is something rather different than real property. An insect may recognize the former, but not that latter, although they recognize the looser concept of territory or "personal space."

Real "property" rights are simply an extension into the capitalist realm of fuedal/tribalistic territorialism of the kind that Rand despised. I've always found this a bit ironic. Had capitalism not evolved out of such fuedal societies it isn't entirely clear that it ever would have developed a concept of real property at all. It isn't inate to the philosophy, and one might even argue that it's somewhat counter to it.

People didn't buy land. They took it. By force, and defended it by force. Then they could claim the right to "sell" that which they had stolen from the public domain. All real property comes from such a background.

So, you want to claim ownership to an asteroid? Well buddy, you better get your ass out there and build a castle. Then when someone else comes along you tell them to shove off or pay the toll.

If they're sitting there and you can't march the knights out of the castle to defend "your" land, well, guess what, you never owned it in the first place. Where there is no prexisting local legal jurisdiction it's back to might makes right.

Or in the more colorful vernacular, Shit or get off the pot.

If you yourself think we're going to develop property "rights" to space through some local process you're just as daft. We're going to fight and kill for them, just as we always have. And when we "discover" the "people" who already "own" a bit of space we might well expect them to take exception to that and fight back.

Quite frankly I'm already rooting for them, because we've got no fucking right.

KFG

Locke's Labor Theory of Aquisition

[hey!]

Locke studied this kind of issue:
when can the commons be appropriated by a private individual?

(1) Individuals can appropriate common goods for their private use.

Reason: because of necessity. If a person is to survive, then by necessity he must take some of the commons for his own use (food, shelter etc).

(2) One justly appropriates common goods by virtue of laboring on them.

Reason: a person owns his own body and his own labor. When he applies this to a previously unowned thing (e.g. works a plot of land to create a harvest), his personal property interests are mixed with that thing and he can claim it as his own.

(3) There are limitations ot the right to acquire unkowned property: (a) you cannot acquire property that you have not worked with your labor, (b) you can only acquire so much as you can use without spoilage and (c) you must leave "as much and as good" as you take (e.g. the acquisition should not impoversh the commons). An example of C is that if there are many oases on a desert route, you can take one and improve it for your private use. However if there is only one, this must remain in the commons.

Locke goes on to point out that these limitations are somewhat ameliorated by the introduction of money. Because you can purchase the labor of others, thta labor becomes your labor, and you can use it to claim more from the commons than you can personally mix your labor with. Likewise, he asserts since you can covert resources into cash and cash is in essence unspoilable, you can acquire more of a resource than you can make personal use of. Finally, because people can purchase the use of things from you, it becomes possible to acquire the entire stock of a resource without making it impossible for other people to survive.

Locke then goes on to argue that people, by accepting the use of money, have accepted the consequences which include vastly unequal wealth and power. Once he gets to this point, he becomes more controversial. Locke was no socialist: he was an advocate of the pursuit of unlimited wealth and personal power, taken from the commons if necessary, even to the point of believing some human beings could own others. Yet even he would not say you could claim something without lifting a finger to do something with it.

Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge?

[rossifer]

One could argue that the American Indians had no concept of land ownership, and that they didn't realize what it meant to buy and sell land.

Only if you know nothing about American Indians. Native Americans as a group actually exhibited highly sophisticated concepts of land ownership, including negotiating rights connected to the land (hunting, farming, etc.). Do you think it's a coincidence that so many towns in New England are "Springfield", or some other "...field"? The european settlers didn't come ashore to virgin wilderness. They came ashore and found thriving agricultural communities, towns and even cities.

Happily for those settlers, the germs they carried resulted in mortality rates of 95% or more in the native communities, which meant free farms, often already planted. Unhappily for us, that mortality rate and the european position on natives at the time means that we don't get to hear about the history of those groups before that time.

As for the Manhattan purchase, those who "bought" Manhattan actually bought hunting rights for one season from a group not local to Manhattan. When the actual residents objected to being moved out, and requested a hearing, most were killed. The Louisana purchase is similarly troubling, since the US apparently bought the territory of more than a hundred native nations from the French without consulting with any of the Indian nations involved. The fact that many of those nations had gone to all the trouble of sending ambassadors to europe was of little inconvenience to the US or the French.

This is not to present Indians as universally noble, many groups allied with european settlers to gain an advantage over competing groups, and were often quite brutal when they had the upper hand. Still other groups picked up the european habit of scalping with a vengance (used by europeans to establish headcounts for any of several bounties on indian lives).

But don't pretend that they didn't have sophisticated concepts of land ownership. They most definitely did. What they didn't have was resistance to european germs and the firearms and organization to balance the military might of the european settlers. During the US expansion to the west coast, the US signed literally hundreds of treaties with native american nations. And broke every single treaty. Every one. Since then, the US has done just a little better. After all, they still have the casinos...

Regards,
Ross