Property Rights Proposal]

I disagree. My opinion is that it should be acceptable to own mining
rights to an asteroid or part of an asteroid without developing it or
handling it in any way. Such an ability would attract investors willing to
gamble that a space asset would increase in value over time. This could
result in a market of investors who are buying and selling mining rights
based on perceived future increases or decreases in the values of those
assets. Market prices would arise, and this price-signaling mechanism
would be useful to the functioning of the space economy. (Perhaps there
could even be 'secondary markets' in which investors would trade in
derivatives such as futures or options with respect to future swings in the
prices of mining rights.)

The owner of a mining right would be interested in making money. He or she
could keep it out of circulation, and make no money as a result. The
investor would have to sell the right --- to a developer (i.e., an actual
mining operation) or another investor --- in order to collect. Investors
would not be motivated to sit on mining rights forever, and there would
ultimately have to be a mining company at the end of the chain.

Let's get this property out into the private sector as soon as possible.
If we impose the restriction that one must handle or improve the asteroid,
then we'll have to wait a lot longer, and this property will remain in a
nebulous and uncertain legal state.

Ron Menich

"Raven"
ssi_list@...
02/26/01 12:47 AM
Please respond to
ssi_list

...
> The worst thing that you can do is to sell off property rights in
> space without requiring the owner to be physically on site. What will
> happen is that companies that buy claim early and then use that
> purchase to exthort huge sums for the privilege of using the property
> in question.
Quite agreed. But if you're a corporation wanting to buy the
property rights to some unvisited roid, who will have the right to sell
them anyway? I'll volunteer if everybody wants me to. :-)

> What needs to be done is to tie the exploitation of the property with
> its ownership, or we will end up with millions of people/corporations
> owning everything in the solar system and everyone still on earth.
That would be an obscenity.

Jon L. Beck