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posted by CoolHand on Friday March 31 2017, @05:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the martian-gold-rush-of-2029 dept.

http://www.autodidacts.io/who-will-own-mars/

Everyone's excited about rockets to Mars, and each SpaceX launch brings that dream closer to reality. Musk and others are putting a lot of money and brainpower on the technical problem of getting people to Mars. Less sensational topics, such as surviving on Mars, receive less attention — but plenty of money and serious thought, because there's no way to get around them.

But there's another important question which isn't getting much attention:

Who will own Mars, and how will it be governed?

Does Mars belong to the people who get there first? To the highest bidder? To all the people of Earth?

Does Mars belong to Earth, or does Mars belong to Mars? Does it belong to the Sun? To the Martian microbiome, if there is one? (What are the indigenous rights of microbes, I wonder?)

Who will be in charge of Mars once the colonists arrive? If Mars turns out to have valuable resources, who gets them? And if a Mars colony is to govern itself, what kind of government would it have?

The Mars colonization project is driven by the ultra rich. And those who want to stake their claim on Mars may rather the rest of us didn't think too much about the little problem of who owns the planet next door, and why.


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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:35PM (#487228)

    Politics... You will agree with us or we'll cut off your supplies, close the bridge, and build a wall.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:49PM (#487239)

    Nobody wants to be robbed in an alley.

    Even people who don't like each other agree that being robbed in an alley is undesirable; there is not only philosophical common ground in preventing such coercion, but there is indeed a market for preventing and punishing such coercion.

    The fact that you and others can envision that frightening situation suggests that you'll band together in a way that reduces the chances of it coming to pass (and to prevent abuse, there will be separation of powers, which is best implemented as competition within the market). The key is to take that banding together to its limit, from the level of interactions between nation states all the way down to the protection of individuals, as determined by well-defined contracts.

    A government is not some magical thing; it does not solve the problem you present—indeed, a government is usually the perpetrator of such coercion; just recently it was reported that in one year, police in the U.S. have conficated more property than all criminal thefts combined. As with any problem, it is not only the case that the market can find a solution, but it will have the highest probability of finding the better (if not the best) solution for the given conditions at hand; allow people to make bets on the best way to live, and provide enough time to see the results.