If you are actually generating wealth, as apposed to just saying somethings yours, then there should be something that wasn't there before.
As I've already explained, the mere act of
homesteading creates value. By getting there and proving that the homesteaded property is mine (i.e. no one got there before me), I've made it more accessible to the people who didn't get there before me, but may now be interested in buying it. I've made an effort to bring this property into the human economy, and my ownership of it is my reward.
There is a reason why no one else got there before me. If it was ignorance, then my reward is for pursuit, analysis, and application of knowledge. If it was laziness, then my reward is for my willingness and diligence. If it was cowardice, then my reward is for courage (or rational risk management, which is a very important skill). If it was lack of funds, then my reward is built upon virtues that were applied to earn the funds I have invested in this venture. If it was lack of credit, then my reward is for my ability to prove my creditworthiness, which too can only come from virtue. Etc.
And even the ignorant lazy cowards get some trickle-down benefits from me getting that property: if the asteroid I homestead is rich in silicon, the price of their next video game system will probably go down as the result.
Most important of all, free market capitalism encourages all those virtues in others, while the system you advocate discourages them! My system leads to growth of civilization, your system leads to its stagnation or decline! To me, an atheist whose only hope against mortality is scientific progress, my system represents life and your system represents death!
I bless the ocean, thus making wealth, where there was none. I would now like to charge anyone $100 to travel or otherwise use the ocean.
What special claim to the ocean do you have? Who would buy an ocean from you, knowing that their claim to it would hardly be more legitimate than yours? (And, as information technology advances, scams become ever more difficult to get away with.) If you were to build a
seastead, however, your claim to the immediate area could be legitimate.
In the "wild west", land homesteading rights were recognized by the overwhelming majority of the population because the overwhelming majority of the population benefited from that system, as would be the case with whatever standard the free market develops for homesteading asteroids. I cannot predict all the details of what it should take to claim property as homestead and what should be required to challenge that claim - in a free society, natural law is a living science that will evolve as it is needed.
For example, could you convince a jury of 12 randomly-selected reputable individuals (i.e. not retards / altruists) that you are the one who brought the whole ocean into the human economy? If you could that would be a spectacular fluke, and subsequent legal challenges would reverse it.
What counts as "wealth" is purely in peoples head, so it can never be a standard for becoming owner of previously unowned land, as there would be no legitimate owner in any dispute.
The humanity wasn't created with an instruction manual on how to live rightly, we had to evolve from primordial goo and figure it out for ourselves. We've made many huge mistakes along the way: "divine right" of governments, wars, failure to recognize the property rights of more primitive cultures (or fairly document the exchange of land for trinkets), colonization, altruism, democracy, and so on. But that doesn't mean we can't be civilized and recognize the natural human right to property going forward.
At a certain point, advances in information technology make property rights very easy to manage. All information about claims of ownership must be in public domain (i.e. "open source" evidence), anyone should be able to challenge it, etc. When one human being obtains property from an other through violence or fraud, it is within the best interest of all property owners to bring the thief to justice (i.e. restoration and restitution). When a human being obtains resources that no other human being has a legitimate claim to - the homesteader is now the owner.
Furthermore, ownership must be specific - a government cannot own resources for the benefit of its "citizens" because subjugation to it is imposed without individual consent. A newborn baby or an elephant don't have the right to property, the prerequisite to that is the ability to reason, to recognize the rights of others, and thus to be able to take responsibility for one's actions. Since human brains are individual, so is the capacity for ownership. You can own specific shares in a specific corporation, but you cannot own "citizenship" in a government: you didn't choose to get it and you can't sell / trade it. (Getting rid of citizenship is a very limited and complicated process that requires a lot of bureaucrat butt-kissing - you can transfer from one massa to an other if the two are friends, but you are still a slave.)
And you can't claim benefits of ownership without being responsible for its liabilities. How would you feel if someone were to punish you for a horrendous crime "your government" has committed, as it does on perpetual basis?
What purpose do unowned resources hold? They only bring benefit to individuals looking to stash their liabilities (ex. toxic waste) with impunity, so that when it damages someone else there's no owner to take responsibility. Unowned resources are a hazard to everyone!
I think how you homesteaded an asteroid didn't create any wealth, you do, you think you own the asteroid, I think you don't. Neither of us is objectively right or wrong [...]
No, I'm sorry, but you are objectively wrong.
The basis of objectivity is empirical science (to the capacity that human minds are capable of at the time), and that leads us to recognize that the basis of morality for living beings is evolution (often personified as Nature or God or various gods), and evolution decides what is right or wrong on the basis of competitive advantage. Within complex societies (and no known society is more complex than the integrated global human society), competitive advantage involves a tremendous degree of cooperation between its members, which is the basis of natural human rights.
For reasons I have explained above, a society that recognizes private property will do much better than a society that doesn't, and countless examples throughout history prove that beyond any reasonable doubt. (Human nature is not constant, true, but if communists are claiming that they can change human nature to fit their ideas then the burden of proof is on them.) This includes the right to claim as your own the property that came to be a part of the human economy as the result of your actions.