Self-determination is a right of a people, yet a majority decides. So it is the will of a part, not of the people.
Any collective decision is procedurally taken by a majority - this is a feature of every popular will, not a peculiarity of Earthlings. But for a voluntary people the objection falls away exactly where it is inescapable for a territorial one: into an ordinary people a person is included by birth, without consent, whereas Earthlings is entered voluntarily and left freely at any moment. Legitimacy here rests on two acts of will by the participant himself - the joining and the retained right to leave.
Self-determination is a right of the collective; an individual cannot carry away his share. So reliance on the individual is untenable.
Earthlings does not derive self-determination from the individual. The individual exercises a different, personal right - freedom of association (Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, paragraph 9.3 of the Copenhagen Document). In exercising it, people form a durable community, and the right of peoples to self-determination attaches to the community already formed, as to a people. The individual brings with him not a share of self-determination, but freedom of association.
A "people" means territory, language, history. A people bound by values, without territory, is not a people.
International law contains no exhaustive definition of a "people" and does not prohibit new forms of peoplehood. Doctrine treats the subjective marks as the core - a shared self-awareness, a collective will, its own institutions - while the objective ones (territory, language, ethnicity) are counted as secondary indicators. In Earthlings the subjective marks are expressed plainly; the role of the objective ties is filled by a shared planetary situation and shared values.
Self-determination means a change of political status over a territory. Without territory there is no subject matter of the right.
The objection identifies self-determination with one form alone - the external one. Common Article 1 of the 1966 Covenants sets down two: a people "determines its political status" (external, territorial) and "freely pursues its development" (internal). Internal self-determination requires no territory; in doctrine it is the norm, while the external one is the exception (Reference re Secession of Quebec, 1998). Earthlings exercises only the internal form - the ordering of its own institutions - without affecting the status of any state.
A subject of international law is a state. Without territory one cannot be a subject.
Territory and population are criteria of a state (Montevideo Convention, 1933), not of legal personality as such. The International Court of Justice (Reparation for Injuries, 1949) established that legal personality is not confined to states. The Sovereign Order of Malta has held no territory since 1798, is recognized by roughly 112 states and is an observer at the UN; the Holy See retained its legal personality in the years 1870-1929 without any territory at all. Earthlings lays claim not to statehood, but to functional legal personality on this model.
Logically possible, but there is no practice and no recognition. So the right is inapplicable.
"Not yet recognized" is not "legally inapplicable". The absence of a precedent does not equal the absence of a right: otherwise the first instance of any legal form would be unlawful. The prevailing theory of recognition is the declaratory one: existence does not depend on recognition (Montevideo Convention, Article 3); recognition only confirms an existing reality. Legal personality accumulates through practice; to demand recognition before practice is to make the process its own precondition.
Even if the law permits it, states and the UN will never go for it. So recognition is unattainable.
The objection assumes that recognition must be obtained at once and on request - and since it will not be granted tomorrow, the undertaking is hopeless. But recognition is not requested from an authority; it accumulates through practice. The Earthlings people fixes its status at once, by a founding act, for itself and before the world: under the prevailing declaratory theory the existence of a people does not depend on recognition (Montevideo Convention, Article 3). Legal discernibility comes as the people lives and grows - keeps to its values, uses its own institutions of self-government, increases in number, that is, develops the subjective marks that make up the core of a people. For this no one's permission and no registration are needed: internal self-determination is exercised, not begged for. And the timing is set not by someone else's schedule but by us: the greater the numbers and the higher the activity, the more tangible the reality that international law comes to notice. No one guarantees that this will happen quickly - but with rapid growth it may well happen quickly.
This is a network state, a charter city or a micronation in disguise.
Six distinctions: not a state (no territory and no coercive power), not separatism (changes no borders), not the abolition of citizenship, not a parallel jurisdiction (does not judge and does not coerce), not tax evasion, not digital anarchism. Network states aim at territory and statehood; Earthlings deliberately does not - it is a different rung: the self-determination of the person and of his belonging, not the building of a state.
This is covert separatism: today an "additional identity", tomorrow a claim to territory.
Structurally impossible. By its very design, Earthlings self-determination is incapable of encroaching on territorial integrity - the object of encroachment (a territorial claim) is absent. An earthling takes nothing from his state, but adds one more, planetary belonging. The Vienna Declaration of 1993 states expressly that self-determination does not sanction the dismemberment of territorial integrity.
You are undermining sovereignty: a parallel structure over the citizens of states.
Four guarantees of compatibility: no territorial claims; no armed or coercive structures; addition instead of replacement (no taxation, no criminal jurisdiction, no regulation of the economy); in a conflict of applicable law, priority goes to the mandatory norms of the national jurisdiction. A person keeps his citizenship, taxes and jurisdiction - belonging to Earthlings is only added.
Why a "people", and not an NGO or a movement?
NGOs and movements conduct thematic advocacy by interest. The Earthlings create not an association by interest but a form of belonging, set apart by three things together: a verified identity, democratic self-government and a permanent register. And it is to a people alone - not to an association - that international law recognizes self-determination.