Not quite the same, but the first time I thought of property rights as a thing in general was some sci-fi story I read as a kid concerning access to oxygen, water, and food, which have absolute limits, and a stowaway raised the question of who dies on a long voyage? I recall other stories and movies since with the same problem, but none surprised me as much as that unknown first one.
There are already property rights for slots of the Geosynchronous orbit, since 1973, administered by ITU (a UN organization). Here is a reasonably good popular description of how it works, in the context of an interesting case:
Wouldn't water rights be a useful analogous type of property right as well? I'm thinking of how people upstream often have different access rights to those downstream, or how a certain number of liters are permitted to be taken by various parties.
The analogy is weakened by the wide variety of water rights schemes that are/have sometimes been/could be employed from place to place and time to time. If space ended up with a similar hodge-podge, chaos would likely result. There are a variety of water resources, under a variety of jurisdictions. I suppose we could imagine multiple jurisdictions in space, employing different approaches. But it seems to me there is a strong incentive toward uniformity and homogeneity.
It's been 30 years or more, but I wrote a paper or two on this topic. There are already a couple of international treaties covering property rights of non-Earth objects. One is the International Moon treaty and I think the other is the Outer Space Treaty. Old memories.
Unfortunately, both of these treaties take a mealy mouthed socialist approach to property rights. I think they were written and ratified at a time when no one (politicians, SF writers certainly took it seriously) took the idea of exploiting space objects seriously. So a high falutin' idealistic approach was acceptable.
Anyway, IIRC, the wording is something like these objects belong to all mankind equally, or some such, implying that any benefit of property accrued would need to be divided amongst all the people of Earth, regardless of who puts in the work to exploit it.
In practice, either these treaties need to be revoked, revised, or an entity not subject to them needs to do the work. My guess is that folks will simply ignore them. They were ratified back in the 60s or maybe early 70s, again, IIRC.
The Moon Treaty is a joke that was only signed but not ratified by India and France, whereas other governments whose subjects are technically capable of reaching the Moon have not even signed it.
The Outer Space Treaty is a bit more serious, but it is deliberately very vaguely worded. In its narrowest interpretation, it only prohibits participating states to claim sovereignty over anything natural above the Karman Line and to withhold scientific findings. My guess is that it will stay around for a while, but will be narrowly interpreted.
> The critical resource is then solid angle on the sun, the ability to absorb a certain amount of its output. If you move your orbiting solar cells to where they shadow mine, you could be judged to have violated my property right in that much of the sun’s emission. Analogous issues occasionally arise on Earth when one home owner sues another for shadowing the first’s solar cells or one hotel sues another for shading the first hotel’s swimming pool.
This will be complicated by the fact that satellites will be on different orbits, thus individual satellites will shadow others for only brief periods of time.
The cost of launch to orbit isn't primarily one of materials (though an elevator would be cool) but of energy. Bring down the cost of energy sufficiently and the cost to orbit becomes manageable.
I hear we are only 20 years from practical fusion power!
The bottom and top lines; the right of might is the only property right. I, or my family, county, country, community of countries define and delimit my property by right of might.
True on land, sea, air or space.
Yes we utilize law or custom, when it suits us, but right of might always prevails.
The Falklands back then, the Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow and possibly L4 & L5 the day after tomorrow.
It also isn't true. If A is stronger than B but the property is much more important to B, B may be willing to bear larger costs in fighting for the property than A is willing to match. Commitment strategies matter.
Those interested in pursuing this interesting topic might find of interest the work on Professor Harold Demsetz on property, and the early analogy of space law to law of the sea by Professor S. Houston Lay.
Demsetz, as you may know, argued that he should have gotten the Nobel prize rather than Coase, since he had written many more articles about Coase's ideas than Coase did.
That is a statement consistent with his drool sense of humor. Joking on the square. But, of course, he was not devoid of individual contribution, hardly a mere disciple. I was intrigued with his muses on the relationship of property ownership to the cultural and political as well as the evonomic.
"Given enough time, we have a well-tested technology for making humans."
It is not well-tested in the environment of micro gravity and high radiation. We may have to settle for sending only a few humans (or none) and lots of robots.
"some primitive societies do not recognize property in land"
So if I went there and started building a house, would this be allowed or disallowed? Or is there some intermediate option, where they would not prevent me from building, but then would not respect the boundaries that resulted? If I enforced my boundaries myself (by locking my doors or threatening trespassers), would they be more likely to comply or to lynch me? Is there some other option for them? Because if they disallow building, or allow building and then respect boundaries, or allow building but then lynch anyone who enforces boundaries, these all amount to forms of exclusion, and hence property.
"Defining property rights to geosynch orbits would give the owner of a satellite no longer valued an incentive to destroy it"
Quibbling: destruction seems expensive. I suppose allowing its orbit to decay might count as destruction, but also might interfere with adjacent space; and “abandonment” seems more descriptive than “destruction” in that case. Recycling the materials might work better (reaction mass?). Perhaps that counts as destruction also. Maybe my point is that just saying "destroy it" is a bit vague in that context.
See my comment below. The geostationary orbit is very far out, so unlike Low Earth Orbits, things placed there don't fall back to Earth, if left without propulsion. Due to the disturbances caused by the Moon and the Sun, things left there without propulsion begin to drift, violating neighboring property, so defunct GEO satellites are typically pushed to a graveyard orbit.
With that logic, it would seem that any action of punishment or self-defence for any reason would constitute the institution of property. That seems like a less useful definition of property than the one in common use.
Certainly any action of punishment or self-defense that has the effect of exclusion would constitute the institution of property. How is this different from the definition in common use? Exclusion is critical.
I don't think it has the effect of exclusion in any relevant sense. You are free to use the land the same as anyone else, but if you initiate force against others, force is used against you in return. Same as with all the things that cannot be owned in modern liberal societies.
Not quite the same, but the first time I thought of property rights as a thing in general was some sci-fi story I read as a kid concerning access to oxygen, water, and food, which have absolute limits, and a stowaway raised the question of who dies on a long voyage? I recall other stories and movies since with the same problem, but none surprised me as much as that unknown first one.
There are already property rights for slots of the Geosynchronous orbit, since 1973, administered by ITU (a UN organization). Here is a reasonably good popular description of how it works, in the context of an interesting case:
https://thespacereview.com/article/1634/1
Wouldn't water rights be a useful analogous type of property right as well? I'm thinking of how people upstream often have different access rights to those downstream, or how a certain number of liters are permitted to be taken by various parties.
The analogy is weakened by the wide variety of water rights schemes that are/have sometimes been/could be employed from place to place and time to time. If space ended up with a similar hodge-podge, chaos would likely result. There are a variety of water resources, under a variety of jurisdictions. I suppose we could imagine multiple jurisdictions in space, employing different approaches. But it seems to me there is a strong incentive toward uniformity and homogeneity.
It's been 30 years or more, but I wrote a paper or two on this topic. There are already a couple of international treaties covering property rights of non-Earth objects. One is the International Moon treaty and I think the other is the Outer Space Treaty. Old memories.
Unfortunately, both of these treaties take a mealy mouthed socialist approach to property rights. I think they were written and ratified at a time when no one (politicians, SF writers certainly took it seriously) took the idea of exploiting space objects seriously. So a high falutin' idealistic approach was acceptable.
Anyway, IIRC, the wording is something like these objects belong to all mankind equally, or some such, implying that any benefit of property accrued would need to be divided amongst all the people of Earth, regardless of who puts in the work to exploit it.
In practice, either these treaties need to be revoked, revised, or an entity not subject to them needs to do the work. My guess is that folks will simply ignore them. They were ratified back in the 60s or maybe early 70s, again, IIRC.
The Moon Treaty is a joke that was only signed but not ratified by India and France, whereas other governments whose subjects are technically capable of reaching the Moon have not even signed it.
The Outer Space Treaty is a bit more serious, but it is deliberately very vaguely worded. In its narrowest interpretation, it only prohibits participating states to claim sovereignty over anything natural above the Karman Line and to withhold scientific findings. My guess is that it will stay around for a while, but will be narrowly interpreted.
> The critical resource is then solid angle on the sun, the ability to absorb a certain amount of its output. If you move your orbiting solar cells to where they shadow mine, you could be judged to have violated my property right in that much of the sun’s emission. Analogous issues occasionally arise on Earth when one home owner sues another for shadowing the first’s solar cells or one hotel sues another for shading the first hotel’s swimming pool.
This will be complicated by the fact that satellites will be on different orbits, thus individual satellites will shadow others for only brief periods of time.
The cost of launch to orbit isn't primarily one of materials (though an elevator would be cool) but of energy. Bring down the cost of energy sufficiently and the cost to orbit becomes manageable.
I hear we are only 20 years from practical fusion power!
The bottom and top lines; the right of might is the only property right. I, or my family, county, country, community of countries define and delimit my property by right of might.
True on land, sea, air or space.
Yes we utilize law or custom, when it suits us, but right of might always prevails.
The Falklands back then, the Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow and possibly L4 & L5 the day after tomorrow.
That seems like a truism that doesn't really explain anything.
It also isn't true. If A is stronger than B but the property is much more important to B, B may be willing to bear larger costs in fighting for the property than A is willing to match. Commitment strategies matter.
Good point. E.g. US vs Taliban.
Those interested in pursuing this interesting topic might find of interest the work on Professor Harold Demsetz on property, and the early analogy of space law to law of the sea by Professor S. Houston Lay.
Demsetz, as you may know, argued that he should have gotten the Nobel prize rather than Coase, since he had written many more articles about Coase's ideas than Coase did.
That is a statement consistent with his drool sense of humor. Joking on the square. But, of course, he was not devoid of individual contribution, hardly a mere disciple. I was intrigued with his muses on the relationship of property ownership to the cultural and political as well as the evonomic.
"Given enough time, we have a well-tested technology for making humans."
It is not well-tested in the environment of micro gravity and high radiation. We may have to settle for sending only a few humans (or none) and lots of robots.
"some primitive societies do not recognize property in land"
So if I went there and started building a house, would this be allowed or disallowed? Or is there some intermediate option, where they would not prevent me from building, but then would not respect the boundaries that resulted? If I enforced my boundaries myself (by locking my doors or threatening trespassers), would they be more likely to comply or to lynch me? Is there some other option for them? Because if they disallow building, or allow building and then respect boundaries, or allow building but then lynch anyone who enforces boundaries, these all amount to forms of exclusion, and hence property.
"Defining property rights to geosynch orbits would give the owner of a satellite no longer valued an incentive to destroy it"
Quibbling: destruction seems expensive. I suppose allowing its orbit to decay might count as destruction, but also might interfere with adjacent space; and “abandonment” seems more descriptive than “destruction” in that case. Recycling the materials might work better (reaction mass?). Perhaps that counts as destruction also. Maybe my point is that just saying "destroy it" is a bit vague in that context.
See my comment below. The geostationary orbit is very far out, so unlike Low Earth Orbits, things placed there don't fall back to Earth, if left without propulsion. Due to the disturbances caused by the Moon and the Sun, things left there without propulsion begin to drift, violating neighboring property, so defunct GEO satellites are typically pushed to a graveyard orbit.
> these all amount to forms of exclusion, and hence property.
I don't think lynching you after you threaten them with violence or after you follow through on those threats would count as exclusion.
It has the effect of excluding me. While this might not be foremost in their minds, the result is the same.
With that logic, it would seem that any action of punishment or self-defence for any reason would constitute the institution of property. That seems like a less useful definition of property than the one in common use.
Certainly any action of punishment or self-defense that has the effect of exclusion would constitute the institution of property. How is this different from the definition in common use? Exclusion is critical.
I don't think it has the effect of exclusion in any relevant sense. You are free to use the land the same as anyone else, but if you initiate force against others, force is used against you in return. Same as with all the things that cannot be owned in modern liberal societies.
What can’t be owned in modern liberal societies?