Four hundred years ago King James gave the Virginia Company full rights to anything of value they found in Virginia. They originally planned to mine gold and silver, but didn’t find any. But they did discover tobacco and made Virginia a rich colony. Who knows what valuable resources a company having a similar lease on the Moon would have found by now? Or what inexpensive ways those firms would have developed to ship the resources to Earth once they were found? You don’t find wealth unless you look for it, and you won’t look for it until you know you will be allowed to keep it if you find it.

The Outer Space Treaty, like the Law of the Sea stops people from looking by not allowing them to keep what they find. Why look if some UN agency will just take the wealth you find from you, or force you to share it with 3rd world dictators? Why invest in making money from mining the sea floor or the moon if you have to give up your hard-earned wealth to dome agency claiming it for “all mankind”? Talk about killing motivation.

Now look at comsats. You buy a GEO Slot and frequency and you get to KEEP any money you make with it. The GEO orbit is filled and has been for a while. How many comsats would there be if you have to give half of your responders free to a 3rd world country? Be forced to give half your wealth away to someone who would undercut you on the market? Property rights create wealth. Lack of property rights create poverty. Its that simple and that is why Arthur Clark’s Deep Range and the other visions of ocean development never became reality.