I read an interesting article this weekend in the Boston Globe about space exploration. Why space exploration you ask? Well it all comes down to property rights and how people motivated by greed can do a whole lot of good.

Presently space exploration is moribund. From the time Kennedy made his famous speech government and only government has had the lead role. Space was for everyone and so a dysfunctional government bureaucracy was built that does the bare minimum to maintain funding.

But if you offered private property rights to the individual and added the profit incentive exploration would improve. I am not sure if you have heard what is happening in the world of space flight, but their has been amazing innovation since the private sector started gearing up to offer “for profit” space flights.

The same can happen for space exploration. By offering the right to own something it inspires and motivates the private sector.

Would the United States have been settled so quickly and prosperously if property rights did not exist? Would we have the wealth that we do if your land could be taken at will? I doubt it.

And so it could be with space exploration. Sure things will go wrong, but the benefits for society will far outlive the caustic stranglehold the government now imposes on innovation in space exploration.

Better, some suggest, to rely on individual avarice to spur exploration, by allowing private explorers to stake a claim, like celestial Sooners, to the lands they reach. Giving extraterrestrial property rights could be a powerful force, not only for exploration, but for the efficient development of the discovered and undiscovered resources of space. Celestial bodies such as the moon and the thousands of near-Earth asteroids may prove to be highly lucrative pieces of property – as sources of minerals and clean energy, venues for scientific experimentation and high-end tourism, or simply as open space for refugees from an increasingly crowded planet.

“Property rights will provide the only economic incentive that will possibly justify entrepreneurial space exploration,” says Alan Wasser, chairman of the Space Settlement Institute and the former CEO of the National Space Society. The exploration and settlement of space “benefits all mankind, but all mankind doesn’t want to put up the money.” via The Boston Globe

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