Wait…Grimes is NOT his daughter?
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Umm… my comment is literally right there:
followed by:
As I said, not allowing a specific Earth-based entity to dictate is probably a good plan, as that hasn’t historically worked out very well with colonies on Earth.
The theoretically a good idea part was with Mars and Martian colonies being self-governing, without being dictated to by any single Earth-based government.
Oh, I am most definitely not on the side of any type of dictatorship in this. But I can easily see colonists being second-class citizens if an Earth-based government is in control. (Hell, we just have to look at how the US mainland treats their own Puerto Rican citizens for a good example, and I cannot believe that a Russian or Chinese colony isn’t going to end up far worse.) Self-governance by the colonists in a (hopefully) democratic fashion, combined with an extension of international laws to cover space and interplanetary colonies is what will likely work best.
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I know. I read it. I saw what you wrote after your first line. I was speaking about why it’s a good idea IN THEORY, though.
Which were specifically set up for forms of exploitation. The heart and soul of many international treaties (as uneven as they are) are an attempt to address that, especially documents like the UN Declaration on Human Rights. They are flawed and still skewed towards the global north, but the global south has also embraced those frameworks, for better or worse, and sought to improve their positions in the global community through them, with some successes (when not undermined by the global north). Abandoning them, rather than building on them and improving them, seems a step backward to me.
By someone who has recently supported an illegal coup and whose factories are rife with labor exploitation and racism.
I don’t imagine you are.
Which would have little to no ability to enforce rules and regulation from earth. It will still take months, at best to get there, so pretty much any colony set up is only going to be as good as the people on the ground willing to uphold the rule of law. It will defacto be self-governing in that sense. At the very least laying down a basic framework of rights can give people a way moving forward in a more egalitarian manner.
Which is pretty much what he’s rejecting here. Given his history, I find it incredibly hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. 
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OK, sounds like we agree on pretty much everything here, then. 
One clarification:
Oh, I don’t give him any benefit of the doubt - the only part of his statement I agreed with is not having Earth governments in control, and letting any Martian colonies being (mostly) self-governing.
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I think that would be defacto, as forms of enforcement from earth would be difficult. A framework would help shape things on the ground, and that must be democratic. Not having someone known for being a dictatorial douche who thinks he’s right about all the things cause he’s rich, and who has shown a propensity to exploit labor would also help with that.
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Ah, that is why whenever Musk says something, all I hear is “ack ack ack”
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I know it’s fashionable to make fun of Musk just because he’s a maladjusted tech bro who won the lottery and accidentally founded a cult.
But in fairness, he doesn’t really recognize Earth law now. So he’s just being consistent.
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Oh, that’s just the sound of you repressing your gag reflex!
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I wonder how old you will have to be to drink at a Mars Bar?
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The Hudson’s Bay Company was the de facto government of much of what is now western Canada for about 200 years, but since its existence depended on the trade between Britain and the First Nations people of the area, it could hardly cut itself off from them.
When the Northwest Company moved in, the rival companies fought actual battles until the British government stepped in and forcibly merged them.
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So we send all the Libertarians to Mars and wait for them to kill each other off.
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Well, with a probable life expectancy of 6 months…
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I like KSR, and I understand the distinction that’s being made here, but everyone—e v e r y o n e—in that book was an asshole. The good guys were smug assholes. The bad guys were grumpy assholes. In between you had psychotic assholes, catatonically depressed assholes, colonialist assholes, worker drone assholes, refugee assholes, mystic assholes, eco-fascist assholes, and corporatist assholes. I’m pretty sure the robot factories were assholes too, if we could have examined their code.
If you could teleport Musk into that universe, and I am all for trying to do just that, he’d be one of the nicer people in it. I guess it says something about the author’s skill that I made it through a very long book where I didn’t like a single character. (The rest of the trilogy wasn’t quite as bad on that point, but neither was it as compelling.)
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Re Mars Trilogy assholes… I pretty much agree. MT may also serve as a lesson on such people… and how people of all sorts can be assholes without even realizing it. 
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I am reminded of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2013-03-01.
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Actually, now that I think about it, I hated the main characters in 2312, too. A psychotic performance artist and the floating ball of sadness she forms a sado-masochistic pair-bond with. But again, a good book, except that I was rooting for the existential threat to wipe out all of humanity, which probably wasn’t the intention.
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Kind of surprised that this article doesn’t dwell on the biopolitics of the outlawed. You have to know which links to follow. e.g. Outlaw–>Homo Sacer—> Agamben
