> A negative externality is any difference between the private cost of an action or decision to an economic agent and the social cost. Like pollution, I think

> A negative externality is any difference between the private cost of an action or decision to an economic agent and the social cost. Like pollution, I think this is another perfect example of a negative externality. A few companies stand to benefit quite a lot by incurring costs and risks onto others. Maybe these its possible for astronomy and other endeavours to work around this but it doesn't seem fair that they should have to be the ones to pay for it. If it isn't possible to work around then I think we have a bigger problem here. Personally, I'd like to see these orbits like realestate which are commomly owned and democratically managed by all of humanity. Then companies could, if people are willing, temporarily rent them with proceeds equally distributed. Like in pollution, I don't think market demand for wireless Internet really suffices as a vote here and we need to make it more explicit to really gather consent. Wouldn't it be neat if the net result is that capturing the negative externality actually funded the launching of better space based telescopes?