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The Case for Lunar Property Rights
longacre writes "Who owns the moon? In a thought provoking piece, Instapundit blogger/law professor Glenn Reynolds gives us a brief history of earthlings' discourse on lunar property rights, a topic which has stagnated since the 1979 Moon Treaty. Is it possible to claim good title on land that is not under the dominion of a nation? He goes on to plead his case for the creation of lunar real estate legislation. From the article: 'Property rights attract private capital and, with government space programs stagnating, a lunar land rush may be just what we need to get things going again.'"
I think if anyone can actually get to the moon, they'll have a valid claim on it.
Let's be real, the moon is never going to be like Florida, even if it's really sunny and the reduced gravity helps even feeble elderly people play golf (those big craters come really handy there!) Even if it could be, the powers that be cannot really allow private property in the moon, or private developments in space. Just read a bit of SF. The Earth sits in the bottom of a gravity well. It cannot allow people outside (or almost outside) of that gravity well, with the possibility of throwing down big stones, and no fear of reprisals. Only big changes in technology could change that reality.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
In other words, property rights are unenforcable, and none of the existing governments on earth have any real say. What government is going to spend 10 billion on space hardware to settle a legal property ownership/squatting claim?
In yet other words, possession is 9/10 of the law. Go ahead and argue about the other 1/10, because you don't matter.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
As a human born on planet Earth, I have a right to a plot of land for sustenance and shelter, in reasonable proximity to where I was born. This should supersede property rights of the mega-rich, even if my parents bargained away the rights. At most, the land can be loaned from humanity for an exclusive use of one person for a limited time. Lets not start the same heartless trend on Moon or even try to live there until we can behave decently on Earth.
Humiliated by the Americans beating them to the moon, the Soviets developed plans to send a massive unmanned rocket to the moon, laden with red paint. On impact, the paint would cover the entire bright side of the moon. A second, manned mission would immediately follow. The cargo - white paint, to make a bright hammer and crescent symbol against the red background.
American intelligence learned of these plans. A great opportunity arose to foil them. But instead the American President, "Tricky Dick" Nixon, demurred. "Let them go ahead and paint the moon," he said.
"But Mr. President, surely the image of the Soviet Empire covering the moon..."
"After they've painted it red," said Nixon, "we'll paint the logo of Coca Cola."
No entity can grant property rights they cannot enforce.
This is a Heinlein question--read The Man Who Sold the Moon, he has a lot of fun with it.
http://www.lunarrepublic.com/ Or just do a google search for lunar property for a retailor in your area.
There was a show on this on the UK Channel Four a few months ago. The UN passed a resolution saying no country can stake a claim to the moon, but some joker realised it said nothing about individuals, and claimed it for himself. He has been selling lots on the moon for years, raking in millions.
They interviews people who have bought it, some of them are quite serious. One said she couldn't afford land for her kids on earth, but she got them something on the moon, for the future.
You can see the outcome of this kind of "property-is-theft" attitude in china. There land in the countryside for farming is state owned and city land is privately owned. The net result is that the poor in the cities have some hope of social mobility as there is availability of collateral to raise capital, fund enterprise and create jobs. In the country, farmers have no way to raise funds to start their own businesses or improve their farms, leaving them dependent on the state to improve their lot. Somewhat predictably the state favours uncompensated land-grabs, turning the land to more profitable (for the state) uses. All courtesy of the people.
In short, property rights are helpful for development and reducing poverty, even though it's not immediately obvious. That does depend on the value of land use being higher than the costs, something that's not true everywhere on Earth, let alone the moon.
The question is not whether lunar rights are good, but whether any 'property' rights in land are. The arguments against property in land are strong. When someone creates something - adds value to raw material - it's reasonable that that person should have strong rights to the object created; they've put the work in. No-one (except the Dutch) creates land. People argue that 'improving' land gives the improver the right to it, but
Property rights in land all date back ultimately to theft: through the appropriation of a resource which was common to the whole community, and making it private to one individual. Mostly, that theft has been accomplished with the aid of serious violence, often genocide. It's a basic principle of the rule of law that you can never have good title to stolen property; so you can never have good title to land.
Property in land creates persistent inequity in societies over generations, leading to highly stratified class systems and drastically reduced social mobility. It creates kakocratic societies, which reward the most dishonest and dishonourable; and it prevents communities from making efficient planning choices about their lands.
Extending what has done such drastic harm to the Earth to other planets is the opposite of good sense.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Who owns anything? The person with the biggest stick.
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...shame the historical facts squarely contradict it. Google "tragedy of the commons," or for a more concrete and squalid example look up the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago.
Fact is, ownership of land has zip to do with any kind of ethereal moral justification. People want it because it makes them feel safe. Other people allow it because experience shows that when people are allowed to own land they take care of it better, preserve its resources better for the future, are more agreeable to allowing others temporary and conditional use of it (instead of defending it fanatically), et cetera and so forth.
When land is held "in common" that just tends to mean a free for all where everyone grabs as much as he can of what's valuable about it as fast as he can before someone else beats him to it, with zero thought for the future. Sad fact o' life. All the lovely theories about how things ought to work, with, say, some other species, whose actions were driven strictly by pure logic, are quite nice -- but useless in practise.
They would claim vast swaths of land after just looking at it. However, whole areas frequently drifted from one country's dominion to another. What made the final difference? Force of arms.
If you want to claim the moon, you have to put a fort up there. Because who cares if Joe Shmoe in Pasadena California bought the Danjon Crater for $2,500, when the Chinese put a guy up there with bazooka? Bazooka wins, end of story.
Want to claim parts of the moon? Put force of arms up there. No other way about it. Don't like this fact? Take it up with human nature and human history. This is the only way this process has ever worked
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a reasonable argument, but you seem to be assuming the only purpose of land is to live on. Hardly. There's a reason that range land in NM is $40 an acre and Manhattan real estate is probably roughly a million times more. It's what you can do there that matters.
So what can you do on the Moon that would make it so fabulously valuable? Beats me. The only unique resources the Moon has (exceedingly low temperatures in the shade, unbelievably good vacuum) you can also get in orbit, where you don't have to worry about any gravity at all, and can build eight-mile wide factories out of gossamer and shoe strings, if you want.
But it could happen. Suppose it turns out 1/6 gee allows you (don't ask me how) to grow perfect crystals of membrane-bound proteins fast and easy, something nearly impossible to do on Earth. That could lead to the possibility of rational design of fantastically valuable drugs, e.g. genuine cancer cures and the like. What would that be worth? Very likely far more than $100 billion. (The cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor will have earned its inventors about $65 billion by the time its patent expires in 2010.)
Put aside all the theories, bar-room lawyers, treaties that aren't worth a dam' and the fools who are willing to hand over money here on terra-firma. All that will go out of the window (or would that be viewing port) as soon as someone finds a resource there that can turn a profit. Once that happens you've got a very slow gold rush on your hands. All the people back on earth who paid for a "claim" can yell all they want, they'll be drowned out by everyone else laughing.
However the chances of anyone, or country, raising the capital to go there and set up a commercial enterprise are very small. The chances of them being able to turn whatever they find back into ca$h are even smaller and the chances of making more than the hundreds of billions they spend are infinitesimal.
That's the reason so few people live in the Gobi Desert. It's thousands of times more hospitable than the moon (or mars, for that matter) and millions of times cheaper to get to. However there's nothing there worth having.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think Bill Hicks said it best: "Stop putting a fucking dollar sign on everything." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo Hey, how about keeping the moon the collective property of all humanity? Why do these rich pricks always have to own everything? They already own the property you are in and the land beneath your feet that you keep paying for every month. Not only that, but they can create money out of thin air with the wonderful fractional reserve banking system imposed on us. Bah, I've already rambled enough for now. Also, if you work in marketing, kill yourselves.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
All you need is 10 meters (yards, retards) of fence. Put it up, and create a home in what others would call "outside" the fence but you call inside the fence because that is where your home is. The tiny spot is left for others.
Bert
Who'd hate to see the moon mined for He3. We're already wrecking a planet, we should have learned something from that.
... but in reality, he's just a lunatic.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
> The reason is that the poles offer full and zero sun at the same time.
Lunar colonisation is not a zero sun game.
discussing about solar system property rights...
- Human knowledge belongs to the world