Progressive taxation? Living wages that keep up with inflation? Universal Basic Income? No, free-market thinktank the Adam Smith Institute has come up with an even more innovative solution to global poverty and sovereign debt crises – privatize the moon! In what one Twitter user ridiculed as a ‘comic book evil genius plan’, the Institute proposed that Earth’s most precious lunar companion be carved up and divided between nation-states so they can use their plots of cratered property to invest in space exploration and tourism.
Aside from the logistical concerns, such an out-of-the-box proposal is in violation of the UN’s Outer Space Treaty, which states that space cannot be expropriated by nations and that ‘states shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies’.
