The Case for Lunar Property Rights

longacre writes "Who owns the moon? In a thought provoking piece, Instapundit blogger/law professor Glenn Reynolds gives us a brief history of earthlings' discourse on lunar property rights, a topic which has stagnated since the 1979 Moon Treaty. Is it possible to claim good title on land that is not under the dominion of a nation? He goes on to plead his case for the creation of lunar real estate legislation. From the article: 'Property rights attract private capital and, with government space programs stagnating, a lunar land rush may be just what we need to get things going again.'"

Possession is nine tenths of the law.

[mu11ing1t0ver]

I think if anyone can actually get to the moon, they'll have a valid claim on it.

Gravity well

[OpenSourced]

Let's be real, the moon is never going to be like Florida, even if it's really sunny and the reduced gravity helps even feeble elderly people play golf (those big craters come really handy there!) Even if it could be, the powers that be cannot really allow private property in the moon, or private developments in space. Just read a bit of SF. The Earth sits in the bottom of a gravity well. It cannot allow people outside (or almost outside) of that gravity well, with the possibility of throwing down big stones, and no fear of reprisals. Only big changes in technology could change that reality.

Re:Possession is nine tenths of the law.

[Cassius Corodes]

Even if opening of private property on the moon is allowed, and it creates a rush to buy property, all that would happen is that the property speculators will buy it up cheap and sit on it until it is worth something. There is no incentive for them to do anything with it after they have brought it.

Hence your idea actually has some merit to it. If we force people to go to the moon, and "fence off" a bit of their property this could help speed up the space industry.

No property rights on ANY land

[iamacat]

As a human born on planet Earth, I have a right to a plot of land for sustenance and shelter, in reasonable proximity to where I was born. This should supersede property rights of the mega-rich, even if my parents bargained away the rights. At most, the land can be loaned from humanity for an exclusive use of one person for a limited time. Lets not start the same heartless trend on Moon or even try to live there until we can behave decently on Earth.

The power to tax is the power to destroy

[Rix]

No entity can grant property rights they cannot enforce.

Do rights exist if you can't assert them?

[Keys1337]

I've had my base on the dark side for years, nobody's bothered me yet. The existence of rights on the moon is determined by who wields power on the moon, not some piece of paper on earth. Unless nations on earth are willing to use violence to enforce these land deeds, then the deeds are worthless. I wonder how hard it is to launch moon rocks at earth.

Stop them!

[Anonymous Coward]

> 'Property rights attract private capital and, with government space programs stagnating, a lunar land rush may be just what we need to get things going again.

Great. Spammers on the Moon.

Wish humanity would spend more time developing genuinely useful technology and less time on stupid law tricks like this.

The question is not whether lunar rights are good

[Simon Brooke]

The question is not whether lunar rights are good, but whether any 'property' rights in land are. The arguments against property in land are strong. When someone creates something - adds value to raw material - it's reasonable that that person should have strong rights to the object created; they've put the work in. No-one (except the Dutch) creates land. People argue that 'improving' land gives the improver the right to it, but

• There is no change that people make to land which is unequivocally an improvement; and
• The value of the improvement is never a significant proportion of the value of the underlying land.

Property rights in land all date back ultimately to theft: through the appropriation of a resource which was common to the whole community, and making it private to one individual. Mostly, that theft has been accomplished with the aid of serious violence, often genocide. It's a basic principle of the rule of law that you can never have good title to stolen property; so you can never have good title to land.

Property in land creates persistent inequity in societies over generations, leading to highly stratified class systems and drastically reduced social mobility. It creates kakocratic societies, which reward the most dishonest and dishonourable; and it prevents communities from making efficient planning choices about their lands.

Extending what has done such drastic harm to the Earth to other planets is the opposite of good sense.

Re:Hill of beans

[servognome]

"Property rights" won't amount to a hill of beans to the first person to get up there, stand on the spot and say "this is mine". In other words, property rights are unenforcable, and none of the existing governments on earth have any real say. What government is going to spend 10 billion on space hardware to settle a legal property ownership/squatting claim?
In yet other words, possession is 9/10 of the law. Go ahead and argue about the other 1/10, because you don't matter.

That's all well and good if property on the moon existed in a vacuum (no pun intended). Any settlement of the moon, at least early on will be closely tied to resources on the earth. A govenment/regulatory body doesn't have to deal with you on the moon, they just cut you off from supplies and arrest you the minute you step foot on earth. Or in the case of a commercial interest they can start fining the earthbound portion of the company for illegal land use.

An agreement outlining "property rights" goes a long way to help settle disputes on how the land is to be used. We need the debates and create agreements upfront to prevent long and painful litigation, diplomatic conflict, or war.

Re:The power to tax is the power to destroy

[Yvanhoe]

Exactly. See how the Old World split America in several parts they "owned". See what happened then.

Re:No property rights on ANY land

[servognome]

As a human born on planet Earth, I have a right to a plot of land for sustenance and shelter, in reasonable proximity to where I was born.

That's great if you want everybody to go back to being self sufficient farmers - unfortunately most people prefer to have a better standard of living through specialization and trade.

Euoprean countries did this in North America too

[circletimessquare]

They would claim vast swaths of land after just looking at it. However, whole areas frequently drifted from one country's dominion to another. What made the final difference? Force of arms.

If you want to claim the moon, you have to put a fort up there. Because who cares if Joe Shmoe in Pasadena California bought the Danjon Crater for $2,500, when the Chinese put a guy up there with bazooka? Bazooka wins, end of story.

Want to claim parts of the moon? Put force of arms up there. No other way about it. Don't like this fact? Take it up with human nature and human history. This is the only way this process has ever worked

Re:It's simple

[Wyatt Earp]

On the moon it'll be the country with the most heavy lift.

Re:Gravity well

[Quadraginta]

Um, yes. But the Moon does not sit at rest at the top of that well. You can't just "let things drop" and hope they'll hit the Earth. They won't. Anything at rest relative to the Moon is orbiting the Earth just as fast as the Moon, and will continue to "miss" the Earth just like the Moon does, forever.

Look at it this way. Say you're speeding above my mailbox in a low-flying plane at 300 MPH. Can you, at the moment you pass over, "just drop" a bag of dogshit onto my mailbox to express your opinion? Nope. The only way you can hit the mailbox is to throw it backwards at 300 MPH, which is pretty tough, pretty expensive if you need rockets and stuff to get that kind of velocity.

It's a little easier to hit the Earth with rocks from the Moon, because you can make use of the Earth's atmosphere; you only have to graze the atmosphere and friction will do the rest, gradually, although when you're counting on friction heating to use up a metric fuckload of kinetic energy, you may have additional problems keeping your bombs from melting and vaporizing, unless they really are just rocks.

Furthermore, the real stiff part of the gravity well is only from the surface to low Earth orbit. You can almost as easily reach the Moon from there as you can reach the Earth from the Moon. So the Lunies are going to have to extend (and enforce) their territorial claims down to within about 150 miles of the Earth's surface if they really want to be safe from reprisals. Good luck with that. Remember the Chinese ASAT test? Relatively easy to blow stuff out of low orbit.

Re:No property rights on ANY land

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not?

Re:Possession is nine tenths of the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, that is not how a landrush works. Besides, there's the tiny problem of deciding who gets to manage that "limited" resource. In the end it comes down to being able to defend your property, individually or by delegating the defense to your nation on Earth or by forming a new nation and delegating defense to that. Going there would indeed be the most important precondition to that, unless you want to fight proxy wars on Earth over currently uninhabitable patches of moon soil. You can claim all you want: if I can establish a permanent habitat there first, what are you going to do about it?

Re:Property is liberation

[harry666t]

I'd love to live in a world where people would stop trying to govern each other and start to base their relationships on friendship and love, or at least respect each other's personal freedom. And simply... Not get in the way of others.

But we have that damn ego that keeps forcing us to kill and conquer and enslave. In the name of *WHAT*?

Re:No property rights on ANY land

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Because with nearly 7 billion people and rising there is not enough land to make this even remotely viable - especially 'in reasonable proximity to where I was born.'

2. Because it is an insanely inefficient use of land both in terms of housing and in terms of food production. In other words, it means less land for food and less food produced on that land.

3. Because we can easily create more living space with landfill, by building up, or by using land where food doesn't grow. We can't currently create 'land' to grow food as efficiently as it grows on actual land. Maybe some day, but when that day comes there will be no need for 'a plot of land'.

Re:beautiful theory....

[harry666t]

So, the problem is not whether land should be owned or not. We are the problem.

10 meters of fence and the moon is mine!

[kanweg]

All you need is 10 meters (yards, retards) of fence. Put it up, and create a home in what others would call "outside" the fence but you call inside the fence because that is where your home is. The tiny spot is left for others.

Bert
Who'd hate to see the moon mined for He3. We're already wrecking a planet, we should have learned something from that.

Re:location, location, location

[totally bogus dude]

So what can you do on the Moon that would make it so fabulously valuable? Beats me.

Well, you may have answered that question yourself: speculative investment. There are companies (and even individuals) who can afford to throw a billion dollars away on pure speculation. Let's say there's a 50% chance the land will never be worth anything; a 49% chance you'll eventually at least recover the costs and maybe make a small profit (e.g. in a century or two when moon tourism is viable); and a 1% chance that some discovery makes the land incredibly worth valuable. It might well be worth dumping some otherwise idle capital into securing a piece of the land at dirt cheap prices just in case it turns out to be a goldmine.

The real question is, who assigns property rights? What makes them meaningful? Maybe the UN should allocate a bunch of land to each country with a reasonable claim (i.e. viable spam programme) with the caveat that they actually have to stake out their lands for their claim to be cemented. Something like placing solar powered beacons every few hundred square kilometres, and after a certain deadline other countries can start beaconing "your" land (inaction would be an indication you don't want the land). While this won't be particularly appealing to most countries due to the enormous cost involved, if someone decides to go for it (e.g. Russia) then are the US and China and anyone else interested going to sit back while other countries get internationally-recognised moon real estate?

Realistically the US would probably just block the resolution before it left Earth, but it's an interesting idea: essentially forcing a space race with a real concrete, complicated mission.

Re:Possession is nine tenths of the law.

[digitig]

Markets only work if everything is already (notionally) somebody's property. If it isn't, you don't get a market, you get anarchy. Whoever has the biggest gun wins. The moon ends up owned by competing warlords. Developed countries have moved on from there on Earth. It would be nice if we could carry those lessons thay we've learned into space with us.

Re:No property rights on ANY land

[Alarindris]

The whole notion of organic is total bullshit and not helpful. Want a lower yield? Go organic. There is a reason we use pesticides, hormones, and fertilizers, is because it's more productive. Organic is a fad for fools.

Re:Hill of beans

[Icarus1919]

In a sense, no government has a REAL say about property rights anyway. It's the guns that have the say.

Re:No property rights on ANY land

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a right to a plot of land for sustenance and shelter, in reasonable proximity to where I was born

Not if you were born under the rule of government. Which you most likely were, seeing how 99.9% of the world's land is already claimed by governments.

No, you will have to appeal to authority just like the rest of us. And then spend the rest of your life hoping they won't pull an eminent domain job on you, forcing you out of your home as if you never had a right to live on the land you were born into in the first place. What a great utopia, huh?

Re:Possession is nine tenths of the law.

[fastest fascist]

Seriously, the concept of warfare in space, on the moon, anywhere off earth basically is just so costly and risky I don't see it happening any time soon. Things go wrong easily enough on space missions without malevolent intent, if competing parties start shooting each other up on intention "up there", I think none of them are likely to survive.

Re:location, location, location

[raddan]

Basically, it boils down to: it belongs to whomever can defend it. That's the way it works on Earth-- I don't think that'll change on the Moon, or on Mars. Lobbing rocks at Earth, anyone?

Anyone who invests in lunar real estate before any kind of lunar authority is established, backed up by force, is an idiot.

Re:location, location, location

[Sponge Bath]

I'm not seeing a lot that you can do on the moon.

Escape proof prisons beyond the rule of law (ala Gitmo)?

Re:Property is liberation

[lessthan]

Some people simply enjoy having power over others. They crave it. Whether it is nature or nurture, I don't see that characteristic going away... ever.

Re:location, location, location

[NeutronCowboy]

And the first person to get to the moon and establish a permanent outpost there will have authority that no Earth agency can contest with much success. Bonus if that first person is backed by some government that doesn't care much what the rest of the world thinks.

Hey, look, the US is planning to establish a permanent moon colony by 2020. As is China. There will be some fireworks over this, folks.

Re:Gravity well

[zentinal]

Or read, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

When We Produce Oil in Antarctica

[toddhisattva]

if they discover oil in antarctica

There's no "if" about it: there is oil in Antarctica. 50 billion barrels under the Weddell and Ross seas alone. Untold billions of barrels under the interior.

Also coal and uranium. If it makes a good fuel, Antarctica's got it!

And soon, the real needs of Humanity will outweigh the religious zealotry which has kept Antarctica undeveloped cold and crappy.

a proper turf war a la the falklands war between nationalist forces. perhaps argentina versus china.

That's funny. Argentina may have claims on Antarctica, but would last about two months against China, and the Chicoms are not nice people like the British: Argentina proper will end up Chinese territory if they dare challenge China over something vital as oil.

small problem of who will dig it up. which will of course be outsourced to one of the international oil cartels. go ahead, pick one. bp. shell. exxon.

Likely each section of the oilfields will be leased to the company or combination of companies best able to produce that particular section. They often prove their intent by outbidding their competitors.

If you think these companies are cartels, you can buy a piece of the action. If you think they misbehave, you can buy shares and vote to correct them.

Which is much, much better than dealing with a real fucking cartel, OPEC, which is aligned with questionable and even downright evil governments like Iran and Venezuela.

uggh. the future. citizens ruled by corporations. no thanks

Typical.