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FAA Could Extend Property Rights On the Moon Through Regulation
MarkWhittington writes When the Outer Space Treaty which, among other things, forbade claims of national sovereignty on other worlds, was signed and ratified by the United States in 1967, little thought was given to the idea of private property rights. Now, with companies like Moon Express and Bigelow Aerospace contemplating private lunar operations, that question has become a concern. According to Reuters, the FAA may have discovered a way to enforce private property rights on the moon without, it is hoped, violating the Outer Space Treaty. The idea is to extend the FAA's current launch licensing authority to cover commercial activities on the moon. The agency would license, for example, a helium 3 mining facility, giving the company running it control over it and as much adjoining territory as necessary to run the operation. The size of that territory, for which a particular company would hold property and mineral rights, could be considerable.
I wasn't aware the US owned the Moon or the rights to it...
Following this to its logical conclusion, this means that one day the moon could be entirely controlled by corporations, but not governments. I can't decide if this is a good thing or not...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
If you live in the US, you're already used to this...
Really? You think you can create a utopia on Earth? Knock it off, just knock it off. The Earth will always have problems. Any place with humans will always have problems.
I am still confused why people think the dominiation of corporations in American life is somehow better than the domination of Government. In life in the USA right now they are at BEST the exact same thing. Personally I think an "elected" offical determine the course of my life is slightly preferable than a CEO whose main thought is cash grabbing. Actually NEITHER should be happening.
I have no problem with companies having property on the moon, as long as they realize that they have precisely zero ability to actually enforce any property rights or hold anyone personally accountable for violating any such rights unless there is somebody who is personally there, or at least until they personally return to the earth.
In general, such ownership rights should immediately dissolve when nobody who represents said ownership is living there, only becoming permanent once large enough permanent settlements are built on the moon that a 24/7 law-enforcement infrastructure can be implemented to enforce such property rights.
Until that time, if you mess around with property that belongs to somebody else on the moon when nobody who represents them is there to physically stop you, without authorization from the company that owned it, you would probably encounter a lot of difficulties when you returned to earth, unless you happened to live in a nation that didn't respect the laws of the country that the company belonged to anyways.
The entire notion of property is a consequence of civilization, and if you don't have a civilization living there, then you can't really have any permanent property there either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
All the government can do is to put me in jail, tax me or force me out of the country.
Zuckerberg could shut off my Facebook access.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That's an incredibly ignorant comment. The Outer Space Treaty fairly explicitly recognizes the right for a nation to enforce the property and activity rights of its citizens in space. It's one of the primary reasons for the treaty existing at all. The FAA isn't saying Americans will own parts of the moon. It is saying that if I spend a billion dollars to build a mining company up there, it's not going to let someone else mine in the exact same place while my operations are actively going on, since it might damage my investment up there and discourage further exploration or development. And once I've pulled up stakes, anyone can move in there.
It's a pretty damn sensible approach, actually.
The motivations of corporations are typically a bit simpler and can often be compatible with the interests of the people. In a nutshell, corporations just want to make money, while governments want to have control. Corporations can make money from mutually beneficial voluntary transactions. However, the control so often sought by those in government doesn't tend to have an alternative. The fact that corporations generally can't assault, arrest, or kill me is a pretty big difference.
However, the real villain is the amalgamation of both into a single entity, which we effectively have in a lot of cases. Governments are used as muscle for corporations, and corporations are used to get around the restrictions on government, creating an unstoppable monster.
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