QuantumG's Blog

I have previously written about why space settlement is important , but just how important is it? In a recent interview Rand Simberg comments: "What risk you're willing to take is a function of what it's worth to you. In World War II, we sent up squadrons of B-17s over Germany every day - sometimes half of them didn't come back. We tried to minimize the casualties, but we didn't stop flying just because we were having huge losses. What they were doing was important, and we were willing to risk lives to do it." He was not just referring to the current government efforts at human spaceflight, but also to the growing concern with safety by private spaceflight providers. Just how important is commercial spaceflight? At a recent hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology , Rep E.B. Johnson (D-Texas) answers: "So far the only potential non-NASA market that NASA has identified for Congress are super-wealthy space tourists, and no...

The philosophical basis of copyright law is a travesty that is not worth going into here. The resultant statist defense of "intellectual property" is heavy handed and infected with cronyism because the philosophical basis is of such poverty. The typical libertarian response is to disavow any right, as such, to protection of intellectual property. I'd like to suggest this is an extreme response and describe how something akin to copyright is valid in a free market, libertarian society. The fundamental basis of libertarianism is private property. In this theory there can be no question that the correct and proper owner of work is the creator of that work. (A possible caveat is that all the inputs to the work were already owned by the creator - if you create a sculpture out of my marble, not only is that sculpture mine, I may have recourse against you for using the marble without my permission.) In terms of homesteading, the creator of a work has a greater claim than an...