[tsimionescu]

You took a world-heritage argument and turned it colonial. The idea, as I understood the GP, was that it would apply to all monuments, whether Chinese or Roman or Native American or French or what have you. That, for example, the Italians should not be allowed to level the Colliseum, since it should be a protected world heritage site, even though traditional property rules would have the Italian state be free to do anything with it.

In fact, some legal framework of this kind already exists, through the UNESCO World Heritage sites. If anything, I believe that tends to have problems in not recognizing enough First Peoples sites as important, rather than being too protective of them.

[magicsmoke]

UNESCO World Heritage sites are created when their host country submits a nomination. If the host country doesn't have the resources to submit that nomination and show that it's capable of preserving the site, it doesn't get added to the registry.

The fact that wealthier countries have more resources to put towards preservation and so nominate of their own UNESCO sites is big problem with the whole system. The Eurocentric bias of the UNESCO committee's selection of which sites actually make it onto the list is another one that's been debated for a while.