Dale.Amon@H.CS.CMU.EDU (10/21/86)
Approximately correct. The US State Department wrote the thing I believe, as a bone to throw to 3rd world countries. In their short sighted minds they weren't giving away anything useful. There was little or no support one way or the other in congress as I understand. The L5 Society put everything it had into hiring Leigh Retiener (Spelling of name is very approximate: it's been quite a few years) and practically put itself in the poor house for years afterwards fighting it. DC has a short memory, but we were the ones to kill it. Considering our resources at the time, we succeeded mainly because nobody was backing it except State, and State doesn't elect people. Most congressmen hadn't even thought about it until the implications were pointed out to them. Considering where we were at back then, it is really amazing what can happen when a gnat lands on one side or the other of a precariously balanced rock... The treaty is not ENTIRELY bad. But there are clauses which could lead to an international agency with regulatory and taxing powers over space industry, taxing power and a decidely non-capitalist outlook. Even with the existing treaties, property rights can't really exist as we know them on any existing bodies. There can be no national soveriegnity over territory although there is required to be national responsibility anb liability over any territory being used. Property rights can only exist in a rather unacceptably weak sense that many other countries have: the ruling body OWNS everything, and deeds and such are more a tenantship than an ownership document, even though they can be sold and otherwise transferred, within heavily regulated bounds. Remember that under US law, the government does not pretend to own nor does it have much control over the land within our borders, although our lowlife judges have interpreted away a great deal of the absolutist property right intentions of the nations founders. I think if such a treaty came around that had protections for individual property on the lines of what we are used to having in a free country, L5 would probably not complain so heartily. We want to go out in space to be free peoples, NOT to be slaves to an absentee landlord. Particularly a landlord who happens to be under the control of a conglomeration of third world dictators. Such a set up would eventually (100,200, 300 years?) lead to a bloody revolt and (depending on the response of the ruling agency) lead to an ugly schism in humanity. And before you pooh pooh the idea, consider what such a UN agency would be like after 300 years of building an international, diplomatically 'balanced' bureaucracy. One that has taxed all space development for 300 years. Think of the vested interests it would have in keeping the colonists under control. Probably as bad or worse in effects than the Navigation laws of England, and existing for pretty much the same reason: soak the colonists to make the homeland rich. There are more people and there is more money there, so the existing interests will control what the colonists could mine, grow, build, sell, what they can sell it for, who they can sell it to, how much they can sell it for. After all, we don't want some small Platinum exporting nation to have to compete with a cheaper source, now do we? If we truly want a future of peace, we should be ready to let people go and live their lives as they see fit. If you enslave them, they will eventually learn to hate you. Then they will kill you.