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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: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @07:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @07:31PM (#487271)

    The reason the "west" cannot export democracy to the third world is because there is a cultural mismatch.

    The same holds here: There is not yet a "libertarian" culture strong enough to reinforce a market of binding agreements through reverence of contracts. However, that will be the way of the future; it's either that, or stagnation followed by some kind of destruction.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 01 2017, @08:29AM

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday April 01 2017, @08:29AM (#487529) Journal

    "Exporting democracy" is newspeak for implementing a political system controlled by money. With the export of democracy comes the destruction of infrastructure, with that comes the aid, and the debt, and the forced international agreements, and suddenly whoever you vote for is irrelevant.

    Aristocracy/strong classes and systems of values are competitors of such a democracy, while dictators and monarchy are easier to control/own.

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    Account abandoned.