Jeff Foust has a roundup of the story so far.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Alan Boyle has picked up the story, including an interview with me.
14 thoughts on “Space Property Rights At The Space Review”
Comments are closed.
Jeff Foust has a roundup of the story so far.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Alan Boyle has picked up the story, including an interview with me.
Comments are closed.
You’ve got a bad URL.
Url worked for me.
I hope we get more political dialog and eventually some laws add clarity, and are supportive of future which the settlements on the Moon and elsewhere in the solar system.
It seems to me there would a lot less confusion without the existence of the Moon treaty. Does anyone know any merit associated with the Moon treaty. Obviously for idiot socialists all of it is wonderful, but my question for people for lack any appreciation for Marxist theology and the numerous evils it has spawned in this world, is any aspect of it which is useful?
Is possible to say, this part is acceptable, but other that it should be completely ignored?
Merit ? It would obviously lead us to an utopian Star Trek like world – and everyone loves Star Trek for some reason, right, right ? : )
It seems that the only “spacefaring” country affected by the treaty would be Kazakhstan.
“Merit ? It would obviously lead us to an utopian Star Trek like world – and everyone loves Star Trek for some reason, right, right ? : )”
That is a point actually.
Not that I think the persons involved were star trek fans. But it is possible that they actually thought the UN was going to become the world government- bring world peace and all that.
And therefore the merit of the Moon treaty was to be a 2 x 4 towards this wondrous construction of the world government. Or basically requiring anyone who wants to go into to space, to force to first help or wait for such wondrous world government to be established.
But in present reality and assuming that forming world government is not the only priority, is there any merit in the Moon treaty?
It’s awesome that your paper is getting wider coverage and hope it gets more still.
the treaty clearly does not contain any language explicitly saying that states may not authorize their citizens to do anything that they themselves cannot do
No state has the right to tell any person they can’t claim unclaimed property (over which they have no jurisdiction.)
I still think giving huge claims to the wrong people is not the way to make progress. It disincentivizes individuals giving central authority to a single entity that controls transportation. This is a really bad idea. Let the transport providers compete in a free market where lots of individuals have an incentive to make a claim that insures they have a first generation lifetime income to make their way on new worlds.
By emphasizing the OST you give it more legitimacy than it has with many people confusing grants with recognition. The OST is about the conduct of old cold warriors. It’s not about the conduct of independent humans. It has no more legitimacy in that regard than saying what land an invading alien species could claim in our solar system.
Gbaikie —
Many small and/or underdeveloped nations were governed by Europeans in the 1500-1950 time period, roughly. Many of the diplomats from those nations (and their fellow citizens) in the mid 1960s would have had personal memories of being colonial subjects, and not all those memories would have been good and pleasant ones.
The Dutch, for example, allowed native born Indonesians no rank higher sergeant in their colonial army. It was also illegal for Indonesians to have more than 8 years of schooling. Ho ho ho. India in the 19th century was famous its dyed fabrics, which were exported around the world. India in the 20th century had no fabrics industry all, and Mahatma Gandhi became a criminal by weaving his own simple robes on his own hand loom. The thing was, India had been a rival of British fabric manufacturers; Britain remedied this by banning cloth manufacture in the portions of India it absorbed, and made the Indians into customers. This was known as “capitalism” — a system of economics of which you may have heard. Yuck yuck yuckity yuck.
I could continue, but it isn’t worth the effort. People in small nations often don’t trust big powerful nations, we’ll let it go at that. They don’t like to see big powerful nations at war with other small nations, they don’t like to see small nations ruled by larger nations, they don’t like seeing the mineral and agricultural wealth of small nations exploited by larger nations.
Small nations in 1967 did not like the idea that a rich powerful nation like the US was going to use its advanced technological skills to strip mineral bearing nodules from the ocean floor, just because it had the power to do so. They objected, and their notion of how things should be got incorporated in the Law of the Sea treaty.
Let’s also note the US actually had no interest in seabed mining — the whole notion was a cover story for a CIA operation aimed at salvaging a sunken Russian submarine. And let’s note that in 1967 the US was bombing the fecal material out of North VietNam, generally recognized not so much for fecal material but as a small state with less military power than the USA, and that some small states objected to these US bombing operations, and that the US government felt happier when delegates from small states where not saying nasty things about US bombers .
The US was willing to give small nations what they wanted in the Law of the Sea Treaty, I’m trying to say. So it passed easily, and some years later when a Moon treaty was proposed, modeling it on the LOTS just seemed to make sense.
Seems you know as much about economics as you do about history.
Mike,
There was also another factor at work for the Group of 77 (the emerging nations that worked as a block at the LOS Conventions) and it that most of their economies were heavily dependent on the export of raw materials. They feared that a glut of cheap raw materials from ocean mining would damage their economies. That is why Article XI of the LOST took the form it did, so the nations whose economies might be damaged from sea floor mining could be compensated for it.
Rand, perhaps you could get a law professor to put together a “where real estate comes from” primer for all the miseducated space cadets out there who make such rudimentary mistakes as claiming that all land is federal land until given to the people.
Trent,
Most textbooks in Real Estate law already have such a section. But if you want a good online summary, especially as it applies to the Anglo-Saxon legal world, here is one.
http://www.duhaime.org/LawMuseum/LawArticle-62/History-of-Real-Estate-Law.aspx
Shorter version of Thomas’ link:
You claim it; you defend claim.
Because of a quirk in history and the reality that there’s more land in space than here on earth and migration will start slow…
Individual people now have the chance to make claims that produce wealth never before seen in the history of this planet.
They don’t have to accept dictates of govt. They can put govt. for once in the position of accepting their millions of small reasonable claims.
ThomasMatula: Good point. Thank you.
Trent Waddington: Among the “miseducated space cadets” who saw all land as federal land until “given” to the people, Americans would point to George Washington, William Penn, James Oglethorpe, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Madison, John Adams, mostof the Pilgrims, and every legislator who voted for the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. There’s quite a legal tradition attached to land transfers in the US; land rushes are still remembered in a semi-romantic way, and no high school history course is complete without a mention of the land grants to the railroads in the late 19th centiiry. In fact, it’s stilll a living issue, since many Western conservatives are resentful of how much land is still owned by the Federal government.
But yiu already knewall this, right?
Ken Anthony: Okay, all you lovers of liberty are onthe moon and staked out your claims. The wealth is piling up. Are you paying taxes to any terrestrial government? Hmmm, I didn’t think so. But you expect some number of earthly natiions to “accept” your claims. Do you expect them to protect your ownership in any fashion, meeting armed force with armed force? Do you expect them to safeguard your “rights” to buy and sell land on the moon, to assure that a purchaser of your property is actually transfering wealth in some agreed-upon manner to your control, etc?
Why? Nasty capricious things governments, particularly governments dominated by liberals, as most of them will be after you property owners have cleared out — ask any conservative, You’ve got even odds of being condemned as pirates, it strikes me.
Mike, apples and oranges. America could grant land because they first claimed it (fought a revolution over it which is called defending your claim… actually, that would be England not defending their claim) before being able to grant any. Nations of the OST can’t legally claim any land, therefore they can’t grant any land. Recognition is just recognition.
No Mike, not paying taxes because their is nobody to pay taxes to. The claimed land started out unclaimed. Nobody else has authority over it.
Not accept, recognize… the words do have different meanings.
The only protection is not to recognize those claims belonging to someone else in court. Defending themselves militarily given the amount of land involved shouldn’t be an issue for quite a while. Lot’s of places exist on earth that couldn’t defend themselves if a bully decided otherwise (see Nation of Georgia.)
Liberals aren’t going to go to war for land. They’ll do exactly what you’re doing… argue it belongs to them in the first place (because we have to protect those poor colonists.)
Oh, I do agree that govts. are nasty, capricious things. That’s why we want to have as little involvement with them as is humanly possible.