The Age Of The City State

Would the first colony be the sole settlement on Mars for very long? I doubt it. I have mentioned before the Chinese ambitions for the Red Planet. And as transport and habitat costs are driven down, there may be many groups with the motivation to establish settlements. International treaties preclude any one nation from claiming Mars as its own. So any group able to afford the huge investment could try to set up shop there. If several settlements did emerge over time, then they would likely be widely dispersed. Proximity might enhance the prospects of trade between outposts but I would guess that most immigrants would be most attracted to the first, most well developed colony. Setting up elsewhere would more likely be the choice of special interest groups: survivalists maybe (goodbye federal government!), millenarians or other religious sects. Perhaps groups favouring alternative lifestyles, polygamist or polyandrist communities for example. Freak shows in general as well. Even the odd eccentric multi-billionaire might fancy declaring himself king of his own tiny martian state.

Are there dangers in all this, if such diversification proves possible. Of course there are. Although some may see attractions in the growth of a planet of city states (the golden age of Greece after all has its romantic draw), we must be careful to place some constraints on any corporations offering to transport settlers to Mars. The last thing anyone of remotely liberal conscience will want to countenance is an atavistic revival of slavery, indentured servitude, indeed any form of human trafficking; or even the transportation of criminals to a penal colony. The importation of inequalities of gender, race, religion, or sexuality will also need to be guarded against with vigilance. In my view, that postulated eccentric regal billionaire should be sent packing too!

These issues are of course a long way down the track. But again it is well to think things through as far ahead as possible, lest the incaution of today creates scope for the tragedy of tomorrow. Had England abolished slavery 200 years earlier than it did, then the institution would never have been imported into the American colonies, and the US founding fathers would not have had to make allowance for such a barbarity. The holocaust of the American civil war might then never have taken place either and perhaps the path to true racial equality would have been smoothed.