Property Rights Proposal]

> > > So far this would result in money changing hands with no work
> > > being done. What's the point in that, except for the speculators?
>
> > I take it you don't believe in our successful capitalist system then?
> Where did that come from?

Isn't that exactly what any "free market", like the stock market, is
about? Money changing hands (in exchange for rights to pieces of
property that may or may not pay anything to their owners) with "no work
being done"?

> The point is that if I have the right to go to a roid and mine it for
> marketable products, *and* the business plan looks sound, I'll have that
> funding. Whether the rock is there for the first comer or I have
> specific rights to it.

If it's there (through some international agreement) for the "first
comer", then you have to somehow prove you'll be the "first comer"
before you can raise money. Maybe that's easy to do, but I suspect most
investors wouldn't want to pony up until you actually got there. If at
that point you do own the property, you're in the same position as if
you had owned it from the start, so it hardly benefits you that you had
to put in all that effort to get there first.

In any case, I don't have any objection to an international property
rights regime that includes rights for first-comers of this sort; in
lieue of the minimum license fee perhaps. Something like that is done
now in common law regarding squatter's rights, so it's not like this is
something difficult to do.

> [...]
> Possibly we could make the law that a commercial entity may declare
> its intention to go to asteroid X and develop it, and then be awarded
> the rights to it - perhaps for a fee. This would prevent several
> companies heading for the same rock and all but the first one losing a
> lot of money. What I object to is some entities owning rocks and doing
> *nothing* with them. At worst crowding out other entities wanting to do
> something.

An important issue, but it's not necessary to completely disallow prior
purchase of property rights or licenses to avoid this. Let's try to set
down exactly what rules the appropriate international body would need to
follow, and see if we can reach something agreeable to everybody.

Arthur