Lunar property rights: buy me to the moon

{"text":[[{"start":11.3,"text":"If you can buy a home in the metaverse, why not on the moon? "},{"start":14.879000000000001,"text":"The heavenly body has already hosted visitors, played a key role in earthly geopolitics and may be home to untold mineral treasures. "},{"start":22.022,"text":"Traffic jams, collisions and debris all point to outer space facing some of the issues that bedevil planet earth. "},{"start":28.139,"text":"High time, reckons the neoliberal Adam Smith Institute, to consider privatisation. "}],[{"start":33.66,"text":"This is a long shot, to put it mildly. "},{"start":36.352,"text":"As things stand, the moon — like other celestial bodies — cannot be appropriated by any sovereign or militia, under the Outer Space Treaty it is the “province of all mankind”. "},{"start":45.857,"text":"Changing that would require international consensus and a mindset shift rather too grand for a world struggling with earthly borders and reappraising globalisation. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":54.91,"text":"Virtually every country has lunar ambitions but the big muscle comes from the US, Russia and China, an uneasy set of bedfellows at the best of times. "},{"start":63.876999999999995,"text":"Increasingly, space is in the sights of individuals who have amassed earthly wealth: Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Virgin founder Richard Branson, among others. "},{"start":73.832,"text":"That illustrates the shift in motivations, from national pride to financial incentives. "},{"start":78.562,"text":"The global space economy was worth an estimated £270bn in 2019 and is projected to almost double to £490bn by the end of this decade. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":88.81,"text":"There would be losers too from a carve-up that allotted parcels to the modern equivalent of 16th century colonisers. "},{"start":95.239,"text":"Imagine a sovereign controlling not just a gas pipeline but entire communications. "},{"start":99.894,"text":"The UK has estimated that blocked access to global navigation satellite systems for just five days could cost the country £5.2bn. "},{"start":108.249,"text":"Consider too that the triumvirate of countries leading the way have vastly different ideas about both property and human rights. "}],[{"start":115.33,"text":"Rebecca Lowe, the author of the paper, proposes getting round this with temporary and conditional ownership of plots. "},{"start":121.997,"text":"Owners, more akin to long term renters, could not hand their plots down from generation to generation. "}],[{"start":128.85,"text":"Because rent cannot be paid to the man in the moon, a philanthropic fund would take the money and redistribute it into areas of common good such as conservation, say, or scientific endeavours. "}],[{"start":139.92,"text":"Plenty of critics see this as about as likely as chunks of moon going on sale at the local fromagerie. "},{"start":145.66199999999998,"text":"But precisely because humanity has made such a hash of carving up the earth, it is a worthwhile debate to start. "}],[{"start":151.54999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/63086-1645955528.mp3"}