Over at Open Market, I respond to criticism from Eric Dawson.
5 thoughts on “More Space Property Rights Discussion”
There’s a lot of weeds being tangled with, but we can start with a statement of his that is absolutely correct…
To grant a property right, a nation must have sovereignty or control over the property in question, otherwise the grant is meaningless.
To take away a property right is also a sovereign act. We are not talking about grants. That is a total red herring.
Anybody, including even a sovereign!, can claim property. Every chain of title starts somewhere. A claim is a claim. There is nothing special about a claim made by a sovereign other than the fact they have an army to defend a claim.
The universe is full of unclaimed property. Nothing the OST says changes that fact.
Anybody can claim unclaimed property. Sovereignty is a red herring. For that claim to be meaningful, it has to be defended. That defense can include the organized claims by members (from any nation) of a charter. That defense includes the chain of title as property is bought and sold.
The argument being made is if you are a citizen of a country, that country owns you somehow and can prevent an action that you could take if you were not a citizen of some country (confusing subject with citizen.) Unclaimed property has no controlling authority. To assert such authority IS A CLAIM.
Any nation can claim slaves. We are not forced to accept that designation.
Until nations do make claims, they have no jurisdiction to impose their wills on others that do. Claims that the universe belongs to everybody is a meaningless [juvenile marxist] statement.
States take positions they can’t enforce all the time, and when they are positions about things that happen beyond national borders it is never a certain thing that the position will be acted upon. However, the point of the position may also be to legitimate things that happen inside national borders. The US, UK, and the Vatican continued to recognize the independent governments of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia even when they were under Soviet and Nazi occupation, and it was neither possible nor expedient for the US to physically challenge those occupations. However, the recognition wasn’t without consequences. It permitted the governments-in-exile to continue to own and operate their embassies and consulates in the nations to which they were accredited, to maintain their bank accounts, to issue loans and bonds and sell them without accusation of fraud. Since more than one nation recognized them, a Baltic diplomat could travel from the US to the UK on a national diplomatic passport, or transfer funds from the one country to the other. They could and did use the court systems of both countries to resolve disputes to which they were parties and to defend their rights. Similarly, if the US were to recognize property claims in extraterrestrial resources, it would permit a range of desirable actions to start taking place without the need for the blessings of some UN body. Businesses could claim those resources as assets and offer them as collateral without the risk of accusation of fraud, so long as there was adequate disclosure of the title risk inherent in the claim. A forward market could then start in extraterrestrial resource claims, which would make space development much more likely. remember that the Virginia Company wasn’t started in Virginia, it was started in London, and its title to the land it intended to settle was highly disputed by international standards of the day. However, English law recognized its claims (at at time when England was by no means able to defend them) and that was enough to raise money on.
I tried leaving a comment over at Open Market, noting that an American can buy property in Europe, the US can (and most definitely the IRS will) recognize the American’s ownership, but that in no way transfers sovereignty over the property from the European nation to the US. We recognize such holdings in court, such as divorce procedings, where the court will also happily recognize an American’s ownership of a small independent island nation that the UN couldn’t find on a map, estimate its worth, and treat it just like all the other property. Nothing in such a proceding, even the choice of the US as a venue, has any implications about the sovereignty or territorial status of the island. Guy claims he owns it, wife demands half its appraised value, now on to his sports car collection.
George beat me to the punch on U.S citizens owning property outside the U.S. You’ll have to ask Charlie Wrangle how that IRS thing works though on out of the country homes.
I thought it was interesting that Mr. Dawson had anything to say about the United States ‘granting’ property rights! The way he wr5ote that sentence seems to imply that he thinks that’s a necessity.
I’d love to see his United States Government, ‘grant’ for his house, car, real property, etc.
I posted this comment over there…
The OST prohibits national appropriation of outer space and celestial bodies through any means.
Clearly the citizens of a nation can own property that is not part of that nation. What this provision really says is the state can not tax the property (by any name) since that would be appropriation by a means.
But it doesn’t show up. It does say it’s a duplicate when I tried to repost.
There’s a lot of weeds being tangled with, but we can start with a statement of his that is absolutely correct…
To grant a property right, a nation must have sovereignty or control over the property in question, otherwise the grant is meaningless.
To take away a property right is also a sovereign act. We are not talking about grants. That is a total red herring.
Anybody, including even a sovereign!, can claim property. Every chain of title starts somewhere. A claim is a claim. There is nothing special about a claim made by a sovereign other than the fact they have an army to defend a claim.
The universe is full of unclaimed property. Nothing the OST says changes that fact.
Anybody can claim unclaimed property. Sovereignty is a red herring. For that claim to be meaningful, it has to be defended. That defense can include the organized claims by members (from any nation) of a charter. That defense includes the chain of title as property is bought and sold.
The argument being made is if you are a citizen of a country, that country owns you somehow and can prevent an action that you could take if you were not a citizen of some country (confusing subject with citizen.) Unclaimed property has no controlling authority. To assert such authority IS A CLAIM.
Any nation can claim slaves. We are not forced to accept that designation.
Until nations do make claims, they have no jurisdiction to impose their wills on others that do. Claims that the universe belongs to everybody is a meaningless [juvenile marxist] statement.
States take positions they can’t enforce all the time, and when they are positions about things that happen beyond national borders it is never a certain thing that the position will be acted upon. However, the point of the position may also be to legitimate things that happen inside national borders. The US, UK, and the Vatican continued to recognize the independent governments of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia even when they were under Soviet and Nazi occupation, and it was neither possible nor expedient for the US to physically challenge those occupations. However, the recognition wasn’t without consequences. It permitted the governments-in-exile to continue to own and operate their embassies and consulates in the nations to which they were accredited, to maintain their bank accounts, to issue loans and bonds and sell them without accusation of fraud. Since more than one nation recognized them, a Baltic diplomat could travel from the US to the UK on a national diplomatic passport, or transfer funds from the one country to the other. They could and did use the court systems of both countries to resolve disputes to which they were parties and to defend their rights. Similarly, if the US were to recognize property claims in extraterrestrial resources, it would permit a range of desirable actions to start taking place without the need for the blessings of some UN body. Businesses could claim those resources as assets and offer them as collateral without the risk of accusation of fraud, so long as there was adequate disclosure of the title risk inherent in the claim. A forward market could then start in extraterrestrial resource claims, which would make space development much more likely. remember that the Virginia Company wasn’t started in Virginia, it was started in London, and its title to the land it intended to settle was highly disputed by international standards of the day. However, English law recognized its claims (at at time when England was by no means able to defend them) and that was enough to raise money on.
I tried leaving a comment over at Open Market, noting that an American can buy property in Europe, the US can (and most definitely the IRS will) recognize the American’s ownership, but that in no way transfers sovereignty over the property from the European nation to the US. We recognize such holdings in court, such as divorce procedings, where the court will also happily recognize an American’s ownership of a small independent island nation that the UN couldn’t find on a map, estimate its worth, and treat it just like all the other property. Nothing in such a proceding, even the choice of the US as a venue, has any implications about the sovereignty or territorial status of the island. Guy claims he owns it, wife demands half its appraised value, now on to his sports car collection.
George beat me to the punch on U.S citizens owning property outside the U.S. You’ll have to ask Charlie Wrangle how that IRS thing works though on out of the country homes.
I thought it was interesting that Mr. Dawson had anything to say about the United States ‘granting’ property rights! The way he wr5ote that sentence seems to imply that he thinks that’s a necessity.
I’d love to see his United States Government, ‘grant’ for his house, car, real property, etc.
I posted this comment over there…
The OST prohibits national appropriation of outer space and celestial bodies through any means.
Clearly the citizens of a nation can own property that is not part of that nation. What this provision really says is the state can not tax the property (by any name) since that would be appropriation by a means.
But it doesn’t show up. It does say it’s a duplicate when I tried to repost.