Incapacity, Age, Wealth And Work

One thing a Mars colony is not going to be able to sustain is some sort of welfare society. It will be a place of work, hard work. There may be resources eventually to provide for some forms of incapacity. Severely injured colonists or those with debilitating physical or mental illness are going to be on the sick list. Maybe there will need to be some ferrying of hard cases back to Earth. The early colony is not going to be able to handle more than a very small proportion of idle hands

The same constraint is going to affect any possibility of retirement. There will be a range of ages among colonists arriving on Mars. Each person's clock will effectively be reset. Any pension or retirement plans made on Earth cannot apply on Mars. If you get to Mars aged 50, you will have come as part of a group of pioneers who will need to anticipate working not exactly till they drop but certainly until age completely overtakes them. The colony may be able to find lighter duties for its members as they age but they will need to be reserved for the most badly affected by geriatric complaints.

So, what if you are very wealthy on Earth, will you be able to import your wealth to Mars and pay the colony to support you? Or just use a substantial pension to get you an easier life? I would suggest not. Wealth on Earth could subsidise vital imports for the colony but most of the necessities for the colony are going to have to be produced on Mars with the labour of the colonists. It would not be conducive to the absolutely essential harmony of an infant colony, if there were to be the establishment of  a working and a non-working class. Any expenditure on Earth by colony members will need to benefit the whole settlement, not just the few, no matter what the source of the finance is. Such restrictions should not, of course, be permanent. As I have argued before, the last thing we should be trying to establish is some form of communism. But a fully normal free economy will need to await the point at which the colony is sufficiently large and well-established to cope with the pressures which social differentiation will entail.