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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 01 2021, @08:00PM
So government saved people from corporations, eh? One of the first things you've said that actually makes me believe you a product of the US education system. When you look at the sort of things [wikipedia.org] you reference, whose side do you think the government took? It was inevitably the wealthy and connected. This has always been the case and likely always will be. Those people did not earn their freedoms with votes - they earned them with blood. Men who never stand up for themselves will, inch by inch, be driven into servitude.
The realization of this is what made America so great and unique. The founding fathers understood that governments inevitably trend towards authoritarianism, incompetence, and corruption; that government is, at its best, a necessary evil. Rather than trying to imagine the best of humanity, it assumed the worst. We aimed to create a government that would work not under ideal circumstances which never exist, but in real circumstances. It was designed to be minimal and largely dysfunctional with excessive checks and balances. And by contrast states, and even the people within them, were designed to be relatively strong and ready to resist against the inevitably tyranny of the empowered. When the second amendment speaks of the security of a free State, who do you think they are speaking of protecting themselves from?
Governments with immense power can achieve great things when they are well run and benevolent. In the 60s China was literally starving to death by the tens of millions. Today they're already the world's largest economy and are likely to soon become the most dominant power in the entire world. Yet that same power will also be what inevitably leads to their return to ruins, perhaps even during our lifetime - mirroring their past of periods of disunity and unity quite strongly. Their leadership will inevitably fall victim to corruption and/or ineptitude, and the impact of this will be immense with such an incredibly powerful government.
Yet we too are now going down the same path as China with an ever more powerful, more authoritarian, and more centralized government. And this is no doubt playing into our gradual decline that began sometime around November 22, 1963. The founding fathers would recoil in disgust at what we, on both a government and social level, have become. So how did this happen? There's an immense amount we can learn from ourselves, and this can be put to use in the birth of what will inevitably become the next great civilization. Yet another pattern that has repeated itself over and over throughout history. The only difference this time is it will be on another rock.