Graverman Follow Apr 20
· 4 min read
The rise of Mars colony is inevitable and will happen within our life span.People are getting more and more interested in space and new technologies are constantly getting invented.In this article I will discuss and speculate on future of political and economical system of Mars colony
Why would anything change? Past years have shown us serious problems with our system.The tension is growing and polarization between people is getting more and more problematic.Monetary system is also failing with inflation rate in many countries being the highest of this century.
Mars civilization in a way would be really similar to creation of US.What starts off as colony, may become it’s own country, with new system.
Creation of new country International law is not ready for challenges like colonizing Mars.No one knows how will claiming land look like.
With current laws it will be just like wild west, who ever gets there first and protects the land with force, keeps it.
The lack of laws about space exploration is worrying and could lead to conflicts, if governments don’t agree on rules.
We’ve seen it many times and we will probably see it again.After being independent from Earth and generations passing, Mars colony will start being separatist, this could be addressed without conflict, but it isn’t going to be peaceful as in human nature.
Now that we have our hypothetical country from Mars let’s speculate on how exactly would it work.
Rethinking system I think it’s safe to assume that people on Mars are going to be openminded and willing to change system, after all they already changed planet.The colony will most likely start with very few people, mostly engineers.This will create opportunity for more direct systems, for example direct democracy.
“Well it would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of goverment.Just like was done in creation of United States.[…] I would suggest having direct democracy.
Representative democracy is too subject to a special interest” — Elon Musk in Lex Fridman’s podcast
While direct democracy is only one option, I think it’s a likely scenario for small Mars colony later changing into sustainable civilization.
Direct democracy Direct democracy is a version of democracy where instead of (like in representative democracy) voting on your reprezentant, you vote directly on the subject.This system has many pros and cons, but I think in a modern world where everyone has mobiles (I’d assume that if you are on Mars you have a mobile phone), creating an safe app with good authentication system for voting is not abstract considering we are talking about times when we are multiplanetary species.
I think direct democracy with modern technology can be as fast as representative democracy making it a possible option.
Deliberative democracy Deliberative democracy is a from of democracy where people are brought in a table and decide the future of country and other controversial topics.According to researchers at Stanford this lessens polarization and allow people to connect their ideas.Their studies have showed people being more open in this free speech environment.This is another system that I think Mars colony could adapt.
Other alternatives These are only some ideas that came into my mind, but I’m sure there are many other political systems that could be implemented.
If you want to participate in discussion I strongly encourage to comment what do you think about the future of political systems.
Rethinking money Why use different currency? The main reason for need of new currency on Mars is transport distance.
Using traditional money is definitely impossible but why not use USD? Relying on Earth in any way is not good for colony.That’s why I think Mars would need a new currency.
Cryptocurrencies Monetary system has recently proven unsuccessful in many ways.More and more people decide against traditional money and choose crypto currencies as they are decentralized and not controlled by one person.This would fit with decentralized nature of direct democracy and modernize the monetary system.It’s important to note that Mars couldn’t use Earth’s blockchains for fast money transfer because of light speed limit.This idea of “mars coin” was also proposed by Elon Musk.
Chinese space exploration I think it’s important to note that not only American billionaires are interested in space.Chinese goverment has it’s own very secretive space program.
We don’t know their roadmap but we can certainly assume it’s ambitious.Perhaps China could land first human on Mars before SpaceX does.This is interesting because we are seeing start of second space race happing right now.Unfortunately there isn’t much we know but we will see how international law will deal with dividing Mars between the two.
Conclusion Overall it was fun to speculate on this fascinating topic, there are many problems ahead of us like re-defining ownership of land for Mars and citizenship of people from Mars.If you enjoyed my speculations make sure to follow me on medium and comment your thought..