DailyDirt: Imagine There's No Countries...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you've caught up on the Techdirt podcasts, you might have heard a brief mention of how Antarctica is split up and a bit of discussion on the possible ownership of the moon. The ownership of new lands will likely become a more important issue as the access to various inhospitable locations increases. Here are just a few links on claiming territories. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: antarctica, geography, moon, north pole, south pole, space, space exploration, territory, treaties, united nations


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  • icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:04pm

    with overlapping territories claimed by the United Kingdom ... and Argentina.

    Mark my words, this will not end well. :P

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      John Fenderson (profile), 31 Dec 2014 @ 8:46am

      Re:

      My thought exactly. The situation is fine right now because there's nothing of real economic value to be had in Antarctica -- but economics can change overnight. The minute that the "land" becomes valuable is the minute the situation is no longer fine.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Mason Wheeler (profile), 31 Dec 2014 @ 10:21am

        Re: Re:

        Oh, but it's so much worse than that. Have you ever been to Argentina? I have, and "las Malvinas" (the Falkland Islands) is still a thing that the average citizen cares about, passionately, even thirty years later. (Passionately and somewhat ignorantly. I once had a little kid, maybe 10 years old, come up to me begging for money because "my papi died in las Malvinas." This was about 10 years ago, which would have placed the date of the kid's father's death about 10 years before his poor, unfortunate son was born! And yet he clearly expected people to fall for it.)

        You can see posters on the sides of buildings downtown saying "Las Malvinas were, are, and will be Argentina's!" And the common man on the street firmly believes that the UK invaded the islands and massacred the Argentine civilians living there, and historical accuracy be damned. There's a cultural hatred for all things England down there that's hard to draw a parallel to for an American audience. Maybe the national feeling of anger against Arab terrorists for a few weeks, when 9/11 briefly brought us (mostly) all together, but this is something that's endured for decades.

        I was there when Argentina lost to England in a World Cup match. It as not pretty, and in fact that was probably my single scariest moment living there. A big group of teens, maybe 10 or so, came up and surrounded me and a friend of mine, angrily asking if we were from England. Luckily, when we responded that no, we're Americans, their mood improved and they started laughing and congratulating us on Team USA's recent good performance in another match. (As if we had anything to do with that?) But it could have gotten real ugly.

        So yeah. Should another territorial dispute with England actually turn into something real... it would be a big mess.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 12:08pm

        Re: Re:

        If it's still available Payne Harrison's novel Thunder Of Eurabus involves this plot. He's no Tom Clancy, but it's still a plausible scenario.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:15pm

    anyone sue Denmark yet?

    Due to coastal flooding for allowing the ice to melt?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:27pm

    If no nation can own the moon, then the only way private ownership can be enforced is through private security. Since no country would have jurisdiction to apply its laws over any part of the moon, private ownership would be on a "might makes right" basis.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    PIGS ARE FLYIN, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:30pm

    i own it all

    i made my own treaty called

    H.O.M.E.R.

    home of meaningful extraterrestrial regions

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    steell (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 6:24pm

    You can only own that which you can hold against others.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    PIGS ARE FLYIN, 30 Dec 2014 @ 7:19pm

    @5

    and if the moons made a cheese what happens when i squeeze it

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 8:29pm

    it will all come down to military might and which countries are stupid enough to go to war over this

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 8:45pm

    countries = illusion

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    got_runs? (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 10:56pm

    Got a whole roll of treaty next to the toilet.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 9:29am

    Get there first

    I think the US needs to drop these wild ideas of going to Mars, and go back to the moon. Set up a permanent shop, and keep off all comers.

    We could easily transport linkable "shipping container" segments to create a lunar city. We'd have to be careful about lunar dust, though. Since there is no erosion on the moon, lunar dust tends to have sharp points, which would be ground down on earth.

    And, best of all, if there is an emergency, the moon is only three days away, not months.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 9:35am

    Off course, thanks to the XKCD rule, we already know who will end up owning both poles: https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ (and Mars: https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/ , everyone else is free to migrate to the moon).

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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