Property Rights Proposal]

> 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"?
Factories and other businesses are currently getting work done, as a
rule. Asteroid mining businesses aren't yet. But if Mankind's presence
in space becomes so massive that there is competition over scarce
resources, and it is no longer a matter of choosing one of the multitude
of roids to put the shovel into, then it becomes necessary to formally
own and trade them.
Currently it seems to me that the fishing fleet, back before the fish
became scarce in many waters, is a good analogy. No fishing boat owns
any patch of the ocean. They make money anyway. Some regulation does
take place - actually enough to seriously anger fishermen in this
country these days.

> 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.
There are many roids out there. If ten different businesses are
preparing ten expeditions to some number of roids, then it should be
possible for the later-comers to shift to some other boulders. A bother
to change destination and perhaps have a longer trip. As for the issue
that at any time there will be one or a small number of roids in the
best position relative to the Earth for a quick journey there and back
with the ore, that will be a problem only if the ten expeditions leave
at just about the same time. Half a year later the relative movements
of the Earth and the NEOs will have made some other rocks the more
attractive ones.
This will also make the pricing dicey. Asteroid X, priced at $20
million, will go down to 2 cents by next month because some other roids
come within easy reach, and asteroid X won't be back within range for
the next three years...

> 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.
Then we are getting closer to an agreement. If you sit on a roid
with a shovel and a rock crusher, I can just keep my sticky fingers off
it.

Jon L. Beck.