Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

More Space Property Rights Commentary

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It’s sort of turning into a telephone game, like this piece:

Simberg, an aerospace engineer, says a new law granting the United States conditional permission to claim extraterrestrial land is internationally legal. His view: failure of the 1979 Moon Treaty to get even one signature nullifies the Outer Space Treaty.

a) The Moon Treaty has fourteen countries who have acceded to it.
b) I didn’t say that the Moon Treaty’s failure nullifies the OST.

Other than that, they get it completely right.

10 thoughts on “More Space Property Rights Commentary”

    1. Just remember Rand, there’s no such thing as bad press. And they did spell your name right.

  2. Well, at least this time they didn’t claim you wanted to set up a nuclear- armed Islamic oligarchical dictatorship on the moon, so coverage is improving. ^_^

    I think the time might be ripe to bring up the observations of Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto regarding property rights and the different systems of granting them. He has great insights into how property enters the legal system and how this occured on the American frontier. The US found a natural, grass roots way of granting land titles to ordinary people where most other countries failed at it. He concluded that the US became extremely rich while third world countries remained extremely poor because of the simplicity and ease of the US system. Simply replicating our pioneer land system on other bodies would be by far the wisest option to ensure equality of access and prevent gross misallocation or under-use of resources.

  3. Wasn’t your claim that individuals, rather than the “United States” could claim extraterrestrial land?

    1. As I understand it, that is the claim, and it’s a not only a good point to argue on the law, it’s a vastly better system. One of the problems in early America was that individual land claims were in conflict with blanket claims from, for example, the King of Spain or the King of France.

      The tendency of a country is to claim as much land as possible, in a proxy competition with other countries over who can make the most grandiose claims, then do absolutely nothing toward developing the land except to send soldiers to shoot anyone who dares to trespass. If there is money to be made, they send in more soldiers to force any natives to work the fields or mines, impress and import any people they need if there’s still a labor shortfall, strip the land bare and export all the wealth, then leave the inhabitants to rot under to boot heels of appointed self-important tyrants. The land is then apportioned out in vast tracts to members of the aristocracy as a reward for loyal service, and they treat such grants as fiefdoms where their families will rule over the serfs in perpetuity. We call these places third-world post-colonial hell-holes.

      As De Soto recounts, the English were already feeling their way forward out of this morass, realizing it was better to grant land to rural immigrants to London and then tax them as free men rather than constantly tearing down their shanty towns. The Americans took things a step further, passing a law in Frankfort Kentucky saying that any person who has made significant improvements upon a piece of land (building a house, a barn, and fences) would be recognized as the land’s legal owner regardless of all other outstanding claims, whether from foreign kings, Revolutionary War land grants, stock companies, or speculators. The Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional (it violated the property rights of what had been considered the legal deed holders), but Kentucky passed it again, since all the voters in Kentucky were just such squatters. It was again struck down, again repassed, and subsquent states copied Kentucky’s model, which allowed non-wealthy people who didn’t own legal property to enter the system of legal property ownership. Many settlers began to specialize in opening up new land, starting new farms, and then selling those at a profit to start all over again somewhere else. The result was a rapid Westward expansion in which ordinary people benefited and the economy boomed.

      It has been a long time since the US has shifted vast parcels of land into the legal economy, doing so at the grassroots level, but by merely replicating the procedures that worked so well in the past, the same system should work equally well in space.

      So Rand can be arguing the point of law and arguing for a system that has a proven track record of success, as opposed to any international legal system that would replicate staggering historic failure.

      1. All good points George, especially it’s economic effects, but it is so important not to make it sound like land grants which ET claims would not be.

        It’s time for some backbone. 1000 sq. km. to the company for each person with supplies delivered to the surface. 1 sq. km. individual claim to each person by simple possession (getting there.) The settlement charter becomes the law of the land and no outside document supersedes it. Ignore everyone else. They can do their own things as well.

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