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Property Rights In Space?
ATKeiper writes "A number of companies have announced plans in the last couple of years to undertake private development of space. There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture. But all of these — especially the efforts to mine resources in space — are hampered by the fact that existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources. A new essay in The New Atlantis revisits the debates about property rights in space and examines a proposal that could resolve the stickiest treaty problems and make it possible to stake claims in space."
There's plenty of space out in space!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Short version (it's a very long article)
There is precedent in the U.S. federal government's history of land grants to railroad corporations -- once the corporation owned the land, it had a strong incentive to increase the land's value by laying track. The situations are not quite parallel: in that case, the land rights only covered surface uses, not mineral rights; and of course, in the case of the Moon, the federal government has no land to grant. But while the general recognition of secured property rights would here take the place of grants from a previous governmental owner, the central premise still applies.
In the scenario envisioned here, the government would recognize claims and register titles, and claimants could then begin to grant, sell, and trade property deeds.
Free Martian Whores!
Your 'homesteading' right is ultimately defeated by an even more natural right: The right of he who has the sniper rifle to shoot you and your family from a safe distance, then come loot your home and take over your land.
Rights are an artificial construct, and exist only so long as they can be enforced either directly (Employ enough guards to secure your home against any threat) or indirectly (Have a government that will, reasonably reliably, either defend you or remove the economic incentive for attack by finding and imprisoning the attacker afterwards). A right that is not in some way backed up by physical force simply doesn't exist: You can whine all you want about your 'right' to property, but it won't do you one bit of good if there isn't ultimately the threat of violence to back it up.
In space violence isn't very practical, so property rights would be backed up by the threat of governmental seizure of the earthbound assets of offending companies or individuals... and again, you still need the men with guns sitting around somewhere just in case a CEO converts all company product to gold and tries to hide it in an abandoned mine. Not that any of them would be that stupid, because they know that if they defy a court ruling long enough sooner or later violence will happen.
Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein. They had prisoners who mined on the moon, and when they rebelled against the government, they hurled down moon rocks. Good little story.
Property rights in space will likely be determined by who gets there first, and who can muscle away the competition, either by military or political means.
Personally, I'm terribly excited about the upcoming prospects for things like asteroid mining and permanent settled colonies on the Moon and Mars (as a couple good early candidates). It looks like we are on the cusp of an explosion in private commercial space flight, exploration, and development. And with China getting into the game, we may have another space race.
There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture.
Just shows that Reaganomics got it part right -- if you keep giving more and more money to a smaller and smaller sliver of society, they will find things to spend it on. Unfortunately, not cost efficient things that trickle down to smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, and working people. They spend it on ever more gigantic toys. "Oooh, Larry, let's build a billion dollar spaceship!" Great. Too bad we don't have a thousand small businesses spending that money on labor, rent, stock, and taxes instead.
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Bring on the space pirates.
But, more seriously, I think the problem was when that treaty was signed, it took the resources of a nation-state to get someone into space. And now increasingly, it's private corporations doing this.
At some point, someone will actually land something on an asteroid or something and say "we own this now", so at some point, this really is going to be needed.
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Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A property right without a sovereign to back it up with arms if necessary leaves me at the mercy of anyone bigger than me who wants to take my claim away.
A property right with a sovereign to enforce it with arms if necessary may put that sovereign in violation of treaties it has already agreed to.
Even if it doesn't, such a sovereign would have to be willing to stand up against the combined military might countries who are willing to go to war to defend the "right of all mankind" to "own" the asteroid or whatever piece of property is at issue.
In other words, any country which says it will back a claim to "space real estate" is betting that the rest of the world won't care or at worst, will just whine about it but take no real action. Any person or company making such a claim is betting the same AND betting no other person or company will attempt to fight the claim by force.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
'natural rights' are meaningless. Rights only exist in so far as something strong enough can stop people from violating them. Take away that state force and it just comes down to people having the resources to stop others.. in other words, become states.
'Homesteading' has nothing natural to it.. it was a piece of paper from the government saying that they would let you go settle in someone else's territory, and if those people got uppity you had the backing of the military.
We planted a flag. That's how these things are done.
Later on, the shooting starts.
how about we solve the lunacy of the concept here first...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
You are an idiot. Homesteading has existed for all of history. One guy with a sniper rifle can't take away someone else's land because everyone recognizes the rights of the homesteader, while very few recognize the rights of the thief. The thief/murderer will be killed for his crimes, whether by police in a state, or by aggrieved relatives in an anarchic state.
You shouldn't talk about things you have no background in. Rights are no more artificial than society. They both exist, even if pigheaded fools like yourself claim they don't.
In other words, the same rules as we have on Earth. A government claims a land because they want it and they have the means to defend it...
Sort of...but with a nasty twist. Whoever has control of large amounts of material in space and the ability to transport it back to earth will actually have the biggest guns. So if we let corporations loose in space without some viable means to prevent large chunks of rock hitting the Earth they will end up not just with more spending power than governments but with more military might than them too. I'm not sure this is a good environment for democracy to flourish.