[duxup]

I feel like this is like "free market should build roads thing" we fund roads so everyone has access and goods can move freely / more economic activity can take place without problems.

What would the free market solution be here? Someone builds all the infrastructure to track all the satellites, and maybe more than one (if not you have a monopoly) person does it. Then they charge for it?

But someone doesn't use it an now we have more space junk ...

If anything a government organizing this and everyone utilizing it seems like it makes for more efficient / lower risk situation with satellites. Everyone just gets on with more important business.

[OtherShrezzing]

Usually I’d agree with you on this type of thing, but in this case I think the insurance industry could and should be picking this up.

They’re the bag holder here, and this system could be built for a marginal hit to their bottom line in exchange for a huge amount of de-risking across their entire supply chain.

[stego-tech]

Except they won’t, because current business is about short-term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability. Companies cannot be trusted to act in their own best interests in the long term, and they’ll just as soon exit an unprofitable market today than invest into making it profitable tomorrow.

[duxup]

I don't think the insurance industry is all that interested providing services or enhancing commerce. They'd have some very mixed motivations all at once if they tried doing this. Including anything technical.

[ccorcos]

Side story regarding roads: I was recently in Shelter Cove, CA and was thinking that the is road probably exceeds the entire economic value of the town… Why is this road even here? It turns out, they used to harvest tan oak bark for the tannins to tan leather in the late 1800s which was a huge industry back then. Lots of logging roads out there since then… Free markets do build a lot of roads!

Insurance companies have the right incentive but they don’t need to be the ones building it. Safer cars get cheaper insurance, so there’s clear market pressure there without insurance companies having to build their own cars…

Pollution, kinds that suffer the “tragedy of the common”, are a good example where regulation is necessary to prevent a race to the bottom. But that’s a pretty simple and straightforward thing to democratically vote on without government spending.

I think the solution is fairly simple: private companies build these capabilities and offer them as a service. The idea that there won’t be a marketplace for this service seems misguided too. Adversarial militaries will want their own systems, likely contracted out to private companies, which will likely offer civilian use around the world…

[notahacker]

After launch, most of the stuff up there is self insured.

Also, the US government and it's affiliated institutions already has networks of ground stations and the insurance industry doesnt.