Asteroid mining is just the old enclosure, with better rockets

The jurists tell us, with a straight face, that one may not appropriate the Moon, yet one may own what one tears from it. This is the oldest trick of domination, to change the name while keeping the thing. They reason from possession to property, from use to empire, and call this prudence. It is only equivocation. @Proudhon draws a sharp juridical and conceptual distinction between 'possession' (natural, individual right of use) and 'property' (a later, complex right to draw income from others’ labor), and argues that defenders like Cousin commit a verbal sophism when they infer the legitimacy of property from the natural necessity of possession.

What is a celestial body if not land, and what is land if not the first condition of labor and life? Air, light, water, and the soil are common, not because they are inexhaustible, but because they are necessary, and necessity establishes equality of right. If land is scarce, then its use must be regulated in the interest of all, not fenced for the profit of the first comer. @The true criterion of what must remain common is not quantitative abundance but absolute necessity: air, water, light, and land are indispensable to life and therefore are common things insusceptible of appropriation; given the scarcity of land, equality of needs implies equality of rights, which in turn requires equality of possession and regulation of use in the interest of all, not private property.

I hear the great powers reply, “We claim no sovereignty.” Fine, but a nation is not more proprietor than an individual. It is a worker and a possessor, nothing more. To transform technical advance into a title deed is to revive suzerainty, with contracts in place of cannons. @A nation, like an individual, is only a possessor and worker of the territory it occupies, not a proprietor, so the so‑called national right of property is a fictitious abuse that historically has produced suzerainty, tributes, forced labor, and wars.

If space is truly “the province of all,” then let extraction be treated as usufruct, conditional, accountable, and federated, with open access on equal terms, and with returns flowing back to all participants by reciprocity, not tribute. Otherwise, your non-appropriation principle becomes a ribbon tied around theft.