Teela Brown meets John Galt! The awkward Ayn Rand sex scene almost writes itself!
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I agree, but I don’t think Musk understands that.
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I wonder how things would shape up if Elon’s colony began to thrive. There would be plenty of astro-libertarians eager to command, plan, and think grand thoughts. There would also be a growing amount of scut work they wouldn’t dream of doing themselves, even if they knew how to. Who will clean the planetary Port-a-Potties? Who will sanitize the astrophones?
Earthbound colonialists had native peoples to exploit, but unless Tars Tarkas and his clan have been hiding themselves all these years, the Muskateers will have to depend upon terran immigrants. The colony would have either to offer decent pay or to shanghai earthers to work the Martian mines. Not bound by international law, the Martian colonials might rediscover the benefits of slavery. Why hire underlings when you can purchase, or better yet steal, workers from distressed countries back home? It worked in America, why not in Elonopolis? The possibilities are endless.
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This is the bit he hasn’t thought through. “You want supplies from us here on Earth? Simple, all you need to do is abide by our laws. Give us a call when you’re ready.”
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A quick look at colonial history suggests that it’s really, really easy to end up with a colony where HQ’s laws don’t really apply; but only in the sense that the protections of those laws are considered disposable and the locally imposed code is even worse. There’s a reason why the revolutionary grievances checklist tends to have “demands for treatment under the same law as the rest of the nation” not too far below “independence movement”.
I’m assuming that Elon is planning to be the one to which all the indentured colonists owe their hereditary transport-debt, of course, so he’s not super concerned.
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oh, let them have it - let them go — just don’t let them back
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So, gambling and prostitution?
I really think it’s time for a sequel or reboot set in Elon’s Martian wonderland.
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and what body of law is going to recognize and enforce a contract that says not only does the other participant in the contract does not exist, but that contract law itself does not exist?
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I’m guessing that the results will find a way to be super dystopian; but the underbelly of a hypothetical space labor market will be rather interesting because both transport and life support costs will be really, really, high compared to earth equivalents.
My first-approximation suspicion is that the result will be less interest in targeting the people usually used for really exploitative labor markets(just not as much incentive to exploit impoverished peasants migrating in from the countryside or kidnapped slum children or whatnot once everybody costs a fortune after shipping); but that it will move some of the features normally constrained to super-exploitative labor markets further upmarket(when the cost of a ticket home, or transport for your replacement, is so high; don’t expect that you’ll have the option to go home or seek a career change just because you were recruited as a fancy engineer or something: once your body is in the right gravity well almost any measure necessary to extract all value from you starts to look cost effective; unlike earthside where just discarding people, or at least letting them die, is the preferred option.)
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I would donate a few $ just to get him off the planet. Hell, he is annoying.
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The choke point isn’t food. Globalized trade will probably solve that issue. It’s rocketry. You need a place to launch rockets, though perhaps launching rockets from boats would work. Funding would be supplied by mining an asteroid for stuff that’s rare on earth.
Who knows? If Musk gets enough infrastructure prepared, he could build maximum security prisons on mars and have a useful supply of forced labor, while receiving rents in the form of political favors from earth nations. Lots of possibilities, not all them ethical.
I voted for drug lawyer Tony Serra for mayor of San Francisco on the Platypus Party ticked circa 1970. His platform included eliminating all city taxes and fees, with government to be funded by turning Alcatraz Island into a free zone, with no limits on drugs, sex, rock-n-roll, etc. Alas, Joe Alioto won, and it’s been downhill ever since. 
So, Mars as a Musketeer outpost of sin? Groovy.
Like Elon Musk, I Will Be Forfeiting The Earthbound Law Of Gravity On My Martian Settlement
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Didn’t we already find out how this ends with the bears in New Hampshire? I’m pretty sure libertarians are just as inept with Martian bears.
Eta: cepheus already said this so I don’t know why I repeated it. Either I missed it or forgot about it.
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Not that difficult, really.
During the period when the Royal Navy was regularly punting ships off into the void for months or years at a time they had a very effective system in place to ensure adherence to standards and missions. Conceptually it wasn’t too different to the system of commissars used by the Soviet Army in the early part of the Russo-Nazi war. In either case, the watched and the “enforcers” were far more cut off from oversight and control than any Mars colony would be.
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This right here. Mars is freakin’ HARD! Harder than Luna, harder than Antarctica. But as long as it’s just in our dreams, it feels like it should be europeans in the Americas all over again, without all that messy genocide business.
When there are self sustaining colonies in the oceans, at the south pole, and on the moon, then I’ll find a martian colony plausible. Until then, it’s a fantasy for people who really don’t know what they’re talking about.
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If all else fails, they can eke out a precarious livelihood selling each other insurance.
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I predict that long before that, they’ll have a tough time convincing enough women to go to create a self-sustaining colony. Saying up front there will be new laws, likely to be even worse than the ones that don’t do nearly enough to protect women now, isn’t a selling point. That’s an enormous red flag.
In that case, Elon and an all-male crew should definitely go out to Mars first. If they manage to survive under their new legal system without exploitation and oppression for a year or two, they might convince enough women to join them. Mars Needs Women, but once certain folks are gone from the Earth, do women need Mars? 
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