Re: [FH] Alarishi Sovereignity

>> >> The permanent departure of the last citizen means the
>> >> sovereignity's charter becomes void and the real estate
>> >>reverts to Alarishi standard law

I was lying awake last night and thinking about this--this was
not the cause of the lying awake, just in case you're about to
start feeling guilty--and it occurred to me, "how do we define
when the sovereignty lapses?"	 It's either when there are no
citizens in residence, or when you stop paying the lease (if
it's a natural body instead of a ship or habitat).  But what if
you have a low population habitat, and they leave (eg while the
life support is being overhauled)?  How long do they have before
they have to come back?  Are we going to make everyone register
on New Year's Day to keep track of our citizenry?  Alarish,
libertarian capital of the universe?  Any time limit is
arbitrary, so scratch that concept--we want to avoid arbitrary
government as much as possible.

Of course, if you have no time limit, someone could claim a
number of asteroids and just visit them occasionally--but you
pay lease for any natural body, so if you want to stock up on
planetoids, why should we care whether anyone is actually there?
We're still getting paid, after all.   And if you build an
artificial hab, why shouldn't you own it in perpetuity?  Subject
to salvage if everyone dies off, but we can crib that from
maritime law.

His Imperial Majesty is tentatively going to retroactively award
sovereignty status to MHE Corp's planetoid, despite its zero
citizen count.

Congratulations, I think.