It’s back. The Law of the Sea Treaty was proposed back in Reagan’s presidency and he dumped it in 1982. The key provision is socialization of minerals from the sea floor, which the treaty refers to as “the common heritage of mankind.”
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Thomas Bowden says exactly what needs to be said about this foolish notion: “Despite the treaty’s allusion to seabeds as the ‘common heritage of mankind,’ mankind as a whole has done exactly nothing to create value in the deep ocean, which is a remote wilderness, virtually unexploited. Under the proposed treaty, however, the ocean mining companies — whose science, exploration, technology, and entrepreneurship are being counted on to gather otherwise inaccessible riches — are treated as mere servants of the world collective.”
You can read Bowden’s piece here.
The U.N. wants to cut itself in on the profits from deep sea mining, much as the monarchs of old would cut themselves in on monopolies. And just as, oh, Louis XIV would squander the wealth thus extracted from productive enterprise, so will the UN squander the wealth produced by mining companies.
The wealth on the seabed isn’t a “common heritage of mankind.” If and when any of it can be produced, it will belong to the firm that does so, and will then be sold in world markets. That is the way “mankind” will benefit.
