Creative profiteering

On a lighter note than yesterday, I have noticed that there are increasingly creative ways to make a buck if you've got serious nerve and a really good poker face. Well, actually, e-commerce makes it so don't even have to have a poker face at all.

Take this for example (from cnn.com):

Beijing, China -
For sale: acre plots, great Earth views, low gravity, moonrock-bottom prices, about as away from it all as you can get.
A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy.
Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co. has sued commercial authorities in China's capital for suspending its business licence on October 28, just days after it opened, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
"There is not a law or regulation in China that prohibits the selling of land on the moon," chief executive officer Li Jie was quoted as saying.
"They don't have enough evidence to make the ruling."

Regarding this, I'd like to know a couple things. First, can someone in the U.S. be charged with lunacy? If not, then some Congressmen and State legislators need to get busy drafting some state and federal bills allowing this happen because we can do some serious cleaning up in this country if we can actually charge someone with "lunacy". I wonder what the criteria of that charge is. I'll have to make a mental note to research that one.

Anyhow, back to moon land sales. While I'm a big proponent of thinking ahead, I think most would agree with me that this is taking it a little far. Then again, with real estate prices in America rising the way they are, I might just have to look into this a little more. ;-)

My favorite part of this is actually the arguement that there isn't a law prohibiting selling land on the moon. Someone needs to tell this jackass that you have to own something before you can sell it and the oil companies already have the moon staked out. They hashed that out along with other provisions in 2001 when they met with Dick Cheney on that Energy Task Force business. Oh yeah, they didn't really do that. Almost forgot.