Capitalism on a Space Station

It's an interesting phenomenon that, on a space station, there is no commonly held property. There's nothing there to begin with, so everything there must have been imported, constructed, or extracted by someone.

In Economics, pollution is called an "External Cost" because the cost to society is external to the monetary system. In space, where someone is responsible for recycling the air, polluting the air is not external to the monetary system; it's a tort. This has massive ramifications when assessing technical designs.

Externalities outside

There are a number of externalities outside of space station, however:

• Blocking sunlight from down-orbit installations
• Exhaust from thrusters in deep space not settling to the planet from where it was harvested
• What others?

-- JonCard - 03 Jul 2008