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Elon Musk will run into trouble setting up a Martian government, lawyers say:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is steadfast in realizing his dreams of establishing a permanent colony on Mars, but any new government there will face immense legal challenges.
We got an early glimpse of what such a future society could look like, buried deep inside the user agreement for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the terms of service read. “Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
[...] Lawyers, however, have their doubts about SpaceX’s abilities to set up a Martian state. In fact, several told The Independent in a new story, what SpaceX has laid out in its Starlink user agreement isn’t radically different from space treaties that have been signed over the years.
[...] For instance, the 2020 Artemis accords stipulate that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
[...] “[Musk] could be trying to lay some groundwork for offering up an independent constitution… just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles,” [Randy Segal, of the law firm Hogan Lovells] told The Independent. “Does it have any precedent or enforceability? The answer I’d say is clearly no; but if you say something enough, people might come around.”
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @07:17PM (6 children)
Your example merits discussion of the concept of JURISDICTION.
The law you quote of an American committing an AMERICAN crime for something in a foreign country is recent law, and very flawed at that as it ignores the centuries held concept of jurisdiction where one country cannot make laws that apply outside its borders. In Thailand, Thai laws apply. American laws do not. The idea that American laws apply everywhere in the world has no legal basis unless you accept that American citizens are property of the American government: slaves, essentially.
As a practical matter, you can only be held "responsible" for laws of a country once you are inside that country's borders. Again, because of jurisdiction.
Taking a step back, the only reason a particular place has a "legitimate" government is that it has a police force / military to impose its will on the population if need be and a military to keep other countries/governments out. It's all based on sufficient force to kill off your competition. Elon's Mars government will be "legitimate" only if he can FORCE other governments/countries to leave his ass alone. Nothing more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 30 2020, @07:24PM
If you have enough force to keep it, you ARE the law, whether it's an asteroid, the moon, or Mars.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday December 30 2020, @07:35PM (1 child)
I never said I agree with the law. It was literally passed because people were going abroad to fuck 12 year old girls - it let people go to jail for it when they came back home.
There are many laws that aren't ethical and are overstepping in authority. Having to wear clothes in public is a good example. They are passed because people want to make the world what their opinion of better is. It's why trumpers often call communist millenials nazis, while the starbucks kid with purple hair calls trumpers nazis - despite the two being on opposite ends of the spectrum and mortal enemies. they're confusing political and economic opinions with authoritarian violent enforcement.
but authoritarian violent enforcement is what lets you take a piece of earth which can't belong to anyone because it wasn't theirs to claim in the first place, be a country in the first place. So I guess why stop there.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @11:30PM
People still go abroad to fuck 12 year olds though.
Anyway, wearing clothes in public is the least decent thing to do, and it really allows people to better protect themselves and others. It really creates a black/white distinction as to your intentions when you show up in public with your pants down. Of course some Leftist clowns want to ruin this, most likely so they can hide their devious intentions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2020, @06:03AM (1 child)
This is a sad commentary on modern governments. The need for a military to protect one's sovereignty from invasion is necessary, yes. However, a government need only impose its will on the population if the people are not ruled voluntarily by the government. Ideally, government should reflect the will of the people, who voluntarily accepts the authority of the government. In that case, the role of the police is to prevent bad actors from subverting the people.
There are two other issues here:
1) Let's say that Musk sets up a Martian state that is sufficiently beyond the ability of Earth governments to enforce their will. Musk will still have assets on Earth, which most certainly will be within the reach of those governments. The USA might lack the ability to impose their laws on Mars, but they can still seize Musk's assets in the USA.
2) It's entirely possible that it wouldn't be worth the effort to try to regulate a Martian state, allowing it to be a de facto government for a period of time. The sovereignty of a Martian state might become the accepted precedent and later efforts to encroach upon its sovereignty might be opposed by the people of Earth on the basis of the accepted precedent. An example is the Holy See, which doesn't fully satisfy the criteria for statehood, yet historical precedent allows the Holy See to operate as a sovereign nation. Italy legally recognizes the sovereignty of the Holy See within Vatican City pursuant to the Lateran Treaty of 1929, but other countries are not bound by the treaty.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday January 01 2021, @04:02PM
It's not "modern governments" - monopoly on violence has always been what defined a government.
It can be easy to view this cynically as you have, but there's a very practical reason that this is the way it is. Imagine, for instance, that Google had sufficient power to resist any efforts of legal enforcement on behalf of the US government. They could, at this point, effectively declare themselves the new government, start unilaterally passing their own laws and enforcing them, and require every person involuntarily give them a percent of every transaction - a "tax." What's the "old" government going to do? Tell them that's against the law?
This is also why we are trending towards becoming a country, if not a world, ruled by corporations. As corporations grow immensely more powerful and integrate themselves into governments, at some point the governments will become less able to enforce their will than the corporations. Some might argue we're already there. We can get laws passed banning competing businesses (TikTok), making "illicit streaming" a felony with a decade in prison, give the mega-corporations billions of dollars while small businesses are left to die, and much more. But a basic digital privacy (or even civil) rights law? Dead on arrival. Laws benefiting genuine* small business and entrepreneurship? Again, generally dead on arrival. I add genuine because the definition of small business has been co-opted [ecfr.gov] by big business. Are you a commercial bank with half a billion dollars in assets and 1,000 employees? Congrats, you're a small business!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2020, @01:18PM
This is one of those laws that seems like a good idea as long as it's "won't someone think of the children!" Of course, the actual solution to this problem is to pressure sex-tourism destinations to change their own laws, so the same act is a crime everywhere.
The problem happens when, for example, repressive countries start charging people with various crimes against the state, then demanding extradition of asylum-seekers (or even citizens of other countries entirely). Which, under the terms of various international treaties, would likely be required to be upheld. For example, Saudi Arabia could charge one of their citizens with blasphemy for visiting a Christian church while in Europe or America, then sentence them to death when they returned home (or demand their extradition). Europe has prohibitions on extradition to countries for crimes which might be punished by death, but as far as I know the US doesn't (as the US still conducts its own executions), but either way they might decide to lower the charge just to life in prison. Irritating the Party is a capital crime in China.
Extraterritoriality just isn't a good idea, and unfortunately the current regime of international law is more focused on expanding it than curtailing it.
In any event, this doesn't have much to do with Mars, at least not yet. Earth-based national laws just aren't ever going to work or make sense in space, and this will be obvious to everyone as soon as any space colony is capable of surviving independently and building its own spaceships (as Earth-based governments could enforce their will by preventing companies from launching if they didn't toe the line in space). This will happen faster than most people expect, much more quickly than the three centuries from first contact it took for the American revolution, and possibly within the lifetime of people reading this.