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> History would suggest we’ll screw this up. Space is a commons, and we humans have a terrible track record of despoiling commons. The question isn't "Will the

> History would suggest we’ll screw this up. Space is a commons, and we humans have a terrible track record of despoiling commons. The question isn't "Will there eventually be some sort of incentive to clean up space junk?" (which would lead to some sort of free-market amelioration if not solution), it's "Can this be prevented?" Free market solutions to cleaning up commons often come too late and are imperfect. The one saving grace here is that other living things won't be harmed; so there will potentially be less ripple effects.

pdonis 5y ago
> Free market solutions to cleaning up commons often come too late and are imperfect. In this case, the commons, if Kessler's predictions are correct, will become unusable much more quickly than has been the case with other commons in the past. That creates a much stronger free market incentive to clean the commons up.
- toss1 5y ago
  Sure, but the incentives are still structured the same, towards despoiling the commons. Each individual/org makes more by exploiting the commons and increasing the risk than by spending more and helping clean it up. This is just like overfishing - every fisherman is motivated to catch more fish himself, rather than to leave the stock to grow, so it gets fished until the population collapses. And, they keep fishing right into the collapse, they don't even stop when their haul declines, just invest more in becoming more efficient at depleting the commons faster. The likely result is that everyone will keep putting up satellites, making minimal safety measures for Cover-Your-Ass publicity, and then it'll cascade collapse one day soon.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > the incentives are still structured the same, towards despoiling the commons No, they aren't; that's just the point. When the commons becomes unusable, nobody can exploit it any more. And if that happens quickly enough, the short term benefit of exploiting it is not sufficient to outweigh the long term cost of it becoming unusable. That seems to me to be happening in the case under discussion. And once it happens, there are only two options open: (1) figure out how to not exploit the commons, i.e., all the parties who want to use it have to come to agreement on how to use it sustainably; or (2) nobody gets to use it at all. If there are significant benefits to be gained by using the commons, as there certainly are in this case, there is a strong incentive for the parties to figure out how to do option #1 instead of just giving up and taking option #2. > they keep fishing right into the collapse, they don't even stop when their haul declines, just invest more in becoming more efficient at depleting the commons faster. The reason this works for overfishing (where it has indeed happened) is that fishing is not the only source of food. Once overfishing has completely depleted a fishery, people just switch to other food sources. In this case, there is only one Earth orbital space, and it doesn't seem like there is any viable alternative to providing the kinds of services that are being provided by satellites. But if that turns out not to be the case, if some of the players are able to find alternatives, then yes, that would increase the likelihood that Earth orbital space would not be cleaned up by the individual market participants.
    - toss1 5y ago
      In sum, you seem to think that there is a difference in the commons attitude when there are no other commons; e.g., the fishing collapse happened because it wasn't their only source of food, and if it were, they would have done something different. I'd really need to see an example where this actually happened, because your pitch in the first paragraph is utterly unconvincing. The incentives for individual players/nations are still to use earth orbital spaces more - the more each can put up there, the more they reach their goals, and prevent competitors from reaching their goals. Of course there is the global motivation to use it better in the long term, but this is in conflict with the individual near-term incentives - the entire point of the Tragedy Of The Commons is that everyone DOES see that it is in their interest to preserve it. Yet, before the tipping point, it is ALSO and in the short term MORE advantageous for each player to exploit it for their own advantage. Russia just demonstrated as much last week. It is totally in their long-term interest to preserve it, and even in their immediate interest to not endanger their cosmonauts or their investment in the ISS. Yet, they went and scattered thousands of projectiles all over the space. So, the assertion that this is somehow different needs more evidence. AFICT, everyone sees the need, yet everyone is still tossing up more satellites without a plan or agreement to fix it. Where is the immediate (not long-term) motivation to not use it, and where is evidence that it is being fixed? It is already quite late.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > you seem to think that there is a difference in the commons attitude when there are no other commons That's one factor, yes. Another is the time horizon for gaining the benefits of using the commons. This is another respect in which the Earth orbital space scenario is very different from fisheries. When fisheries are overfished, the benefit to the overfishers occurs over a very short time horizon. They have to either eat or sell the fish fairly quickly, before the fish spoil. So as long as they think they can go out and catch enough fish on their next trip, which typically lasts on the order of days, to compensate them for the effort and make their expected profit on top of that, they have a short term incentive to continue to overfish. In short, the time horizon for the short term incentive is on the order of days for overfishing. A company deciding whether to launch additional satellites has a very different short term time horizon. A satellite launched now will take years to pay back the investment made in it. So the company has to be able to forecast that that satellite will remain in service, and not get impacted by extraneous factors like orbital debris, for a period of years after it is launched. Plus, the company has to invest resources in planning for years before the satellite is even launched. So if the company projects that in, say, ten years, the risk of satellites becoming impacted by orbital debris is unacceptably high, they have an incentive to do something about it because otherwise they will lose the investments they are making now in satellites that will have to deliver them profits in that time frame. > Russia just demonstrated as much last week What Russia did last week had nothing to do with short term incentives for private exploitation of Earth orbital space using satellites. Indeed, the main point of their demonstration appears to have been that they can deny the use of Earth orbital space to anyone with anti-satellite missiles if they so desire. If they were to carry out such a threat, it would prevent private companies from exploiting this commons.
- YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
  Indeed. But wouldn't it be nice if we could get our collective act together and not have to clean the commons up in the first place?

pdonis 5y ago

> Free market solutions to cleaning up commons often come too late and are imperfect. In this case, the commons, if Kessler's predictions are correct, will become unusable much more quickly than has been the case with other commons in the past. That creates a much stronger free market incentive to clean the commons up.

toss1 5y ago
Sure, but the incentives are still structured the same, towards despoiling the commons. Each individual/org makes more by exploiting the commons and increasing the risk than by spending more and helping clean it up. This is just like overfishing - every fisherman is motivated to catch more fish himself, rather than to leave the stock to grow, so it gets fished until the population collapses. And, they keep fishing right into the collapse, they don't even stop when their haul declines, just invest more in becoming more efficient at depleting the commons faster. The likely result is that everyone will keep putting up satellites, making minimal safety measures for Cover-Your-Ass publicity, and then it'll cascade collapse one day soon.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > the incentives are still structured the same, towards despoiling the commons No, they aren't; that's just the point. When the commons becomes unusable, nobody can exploit it any more. And if that happens quickly enough, the short term benefit of exploiting it is not sufficient to outweigh the long term cost of it becoming unusable. That seems to me to be happening in the case under discussion. And once it happens, there are only two options open: (1) figure out how to not exploit the commons, i.e., all the parties who want to use it have to come to agreement on how to use it sustainably; or (2) nobody gets to use it at all. If there are significant benefits to be gained by using the commons, as there certainly are in this case, there is a strong incentive for the parties to figure out how to do option #1 instead of just giving up and taking option #2. > they keep fishing right into the collapse, they don't even stop when their haul declines, just invest more in becoming more efficient at depleting the commons faster. The reason this works for overfishing (where it has indeed happened) is that fishing is not the only source of food. Once overfishing has completely depleted a fishery, people just switch to other food sources. In this case, there is only one Earth orbital space, and it doesn't seem like there is any viable alternative to providing the kinds of services that are being provided by satellites. But if that turns out not to be the case, if some of the players are able to find alternatives, then yes, that would increase the likelihood that Earth orbital space would not be cleaned up by the individual market participants.
  - toss1 5y ago
    In sum, you seem to think that there is a difference in the commons attitude when there are no other commons; e.g., the fishing collapse happened because it wasn't their only source of food, and if it were, they would have done something different. I'd really need to see an example where this actually happened, because your pitch in the first paragraph is utterly unconvincing. The incentives for individual players/nations are still to use earth orbital spaces more - the more each can put up there, the more they reach their goals, and prevent competitors from reaching their goals. Of course there is the global motivation to use it better in the long term, but this is in conflict with the individual near-term incentives - the entire point of the Tragedy Of The Commons is that everyone DOES see that it is in their interest to preserve it. Yet, before the tipping point, it is ALSO and in the short term MORE advantageous for each player to exploit it for their own advantage. Russia just demonstrated as much last week. It is totally in their long-term interest to preserve it, and even in their immediate interest to not endanger their cosmonauts or their investment in the ISS. Yet, they went and scattered thousands of projectiles all over the space. So, the assertion that this is somehow different needs more evidence. AFICT, everyone sees the need, yet everyone is still tossing up more satellites without a plan or agreement to fix it. Where is the immediate (not long-term) motivation to not use it, and where is evidence that it is being fixed? It is already quite late.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > you seem to think that there is a difference in the commons attitude when there are no other commons That's one factor, yes. Another is the time horizon for gaining the benefits of using the commons. This is another respect in which the Earth orbital space scenario is very different from fisheries. When fisheries are overfished, the benefit to the overfishers occurs over a very short time horizon. They have to either eat or sell the fish fairly quickly, before the fish spoil. So as long as they think they can go out and catch enough fish on their next trip, which typically lasts on the order of days, to compensate them for the effort and make their expected profit on top of that, they have a short term incentive to continue to overfish. In short, the time horizon for the short term incentive is on the order of days for overfishing. A company deciding whether to launch additional satellites has a very different short term time horizon. A satellite launched now will take years to pay back the investment made in it. So the company has to be able to forecast that that satellite will remain in service, and not get impacted by extraneous factors like orbital debris, for a period of years after it is launched. Plus, the company has to invest resources in planning for years before the satellite is even launched. So if the company projects that in, say, ten years, the risk of satellites becoming impacted by orbital debris is unacceptably high, they have an incentive to do something about it because otherwise they will lose the investments they are making now in satellites that will have to deliver them profits in that time frame. > Russia just demonstrated as much last week What Russia did last week had nothing to do with short term incentives for private exploitation of Earth orbital space using satellites. Indeed, the main point of their demonstration appears to have been that they can deny the use of Earth orbital space to anyone with anti-satellite missiles if they so desire. If they were to carry out such a threat, it would prevent private companies from exploiting this commons.
YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
Indeed. But wouldn't it be nice if we could get our collective act together and not have to clean the commons up in the first place?