Any student of history will tell you that geography plays a major role in shaping society. On small, distant islands, people settle more quickly and develop stable cultures. On a significantly-sized peninsula or island, warfare and technical innovation advance at fever pitch. And on a large continent, vast and Byzantine empires coalesce out of feudal chaos, erecting stifling traditions that endure for millennia.
Once humanity expands beyond Earth, the meaning of "geography" will become much stranger, and include environments created by the inhabitants themselves. Distances between settlements will not be a matter of straight lines, but of gravitational gradients - i.e., how much energy (and therefore money) it takes to move from one place to another. So what kind of prospects will liberal values and politics face in the environments to come?
I will break this down by environment:
I. Free Space & Resource-Isolated (FSRI) settlements
II. Planetary & Input-Rich Environments (PIRE)
III. Nomadic
I. Free Space & Resource-Isolated (FSRI)
An FSRI is an environment 100% or close to 100% artificial - i.e., the system must approach closed-loop recycling - isolated from any external input other than sunlight and what raw materials are imported at relatively high expense. This will encompass Earth orbital habitats - since bringing material from the surface will remain costlier than settlements with immediate access to local resources - Lagrange point habitats (Earth-Moon, Earth-Sun, and others), habitats in arbitrary solar or other planetary orbits, and asteroid settlements in diffuse regions of the solar system.
While the different types of FSRI fall on a spectrum, we can still usefully place them into the following categories:
(i) Type 1: Integrated
The more isolated the environment - i.e., the more expensive it is to bring in outside resources, regardless of how close they are in Euclidean terms - the more carefully a settlement must be managed to ensure even basic survival, let alone provide opportunities for growth. Environmental control systems, including temperature, humidity, air filtration, water, food, and waste recycling, will all be centrally monitored and controlled.
When a fraction of a percent in efficiency can mean the difference between having enough air or not, or between eating and starving, the level of regulation is bound to be strict, with strongly hierarchical management overseeing practically every aspect of the lives of inhabitants. As local resources are already poor to nonexistent, this control will not hinder growth, but rather ensure that whatever growth is possible can occur - albeit slowly, with a lot of work.
We can expect the following environments to tend toward integrated FSRI settlements: Low-Earth Orbit (initially, but not in the long-run), Earth-Moon Lagrange points, Earth-Sun Lagrange points, the solar system inside Earth's orbit, Mars orbit (including Phobos and Deimos), and anywhere outside the solar orbits of gas giant planets or asteroid swarms. I will not speculate as to why anyone would build a settlement out in the middle of nowhere - it's bound to happen for one reason or another, once people are moving outward in large numbers.
Unfortunately, with control comes power: Especially in the domain of life support systems. We've all seen Total Recall, where the corporate scumbag shuts down the air vents in order to exterminate political opponents - a scenario that is all but inevitable as mankind expands into a wide variety of new societies. Of course, I think it unlikely that the Martian surface will be a domain where this is practical, especially if oxygen production from Martian regolith becomes trivial. But in integrated FSRIs, it would be all too probable.
Now, this isn't to say that states begun with liberal ideals would necessarily become totalitarian by virtue of having integrated systems, but there would have to be very carefully-designed political (and technical) balances to avoid a single person or an unaccountable oligarchy from asserting absolute power. And the ease of asserting such power would cause people with oppressive social, economic, or political agendas to prefer founding FSRI states on an integrated basis.
Total control of a necessary resource is the basis of what is known in history as "water empires" - e.g., the practice of Chinese emperors of diverting rivers away from rebellious regions to feed more loyal ones - and in an integrated FSRI, this can be taken to its absolute extreme: Control of the very air you breathe, in addition to water, energy, and food. Religious fanatics, corporations, criminal organizations, rich tyrants seeking to found a kingdom, and megalomaniac "visionaries" trying to forge a perfect society will all find this highly attractive.
Another consequence of such intimate control is that privacy is impossible to guarantee: With detailed knowledge of the energy use and emission, gas mixture, water use, food intake, waste output, movement, and mass-density of a person over time, it's relatively simple to know what they're doing, where they've been, what they're eating, how healthy they are, etc. etc. even without cameras and recording devices. The Stasi never had the kind of information that will be available to the systems controllers of integrated FSRIs. Clandestine behavior would be virtually impossible, unless subjects of these states developed an incredible level of subtlety.
However, due to the centralized nature of integrated FSRI command & control, the rulers of these states would be intensely aware of their vulnerability. We can speculate, based on the psychology involved, that control centers and quarters of top people would become environmentally segregated and highly secured, almost in the model of the medieval manor - lords in the castle, peasants outside. Movement would be restricted and require permissions, originally for technical reasons (i.e., keeping the environmental systems balanced) but increasingly as a matter of security.
If, despite all these controls, the rulers found themselves besieged by revolting populations and on the verge of losing power, they would have an option that has usually not been practical in history to date: The ability to destroy the entire settlement rather than relinquish power. This could be done in a total way that no Earth-based tyrant could approach even with orders to blow up infrastructure and shoot people at random - they could literally kill every last person in their society, if they were determined either to rule or destroy. Such despotism is almost impossible to overcome internally, unless (again) rebels developed an incredible level of subtlety.
Meanwhile, in more mundane matters, criminal justice and personal liberty are likely to be treated rather harshly. Even in the absence of tyranny, given an integrated system that absolutely depends on every member of the population contributing their utmost, we could expect people who shirk responsibilities or pilfer resources to face draconian consequences.
Remember what "integrated" means - whenever any person takes above their allotment or fails to contribute their quota, that is food out of other people's mouths, oxygen out of their lungs, water out of their bodies, and energy other people can't use. This would not be looked kindly upon by people who've suffered and sacrificed for the survival and growth of their society, and if the politics are authoritarian or worse, the picture becomes rather grim for anyone who fails to meet expectations. Do not expect jail to be an available option: Prisoners would still be consuming oxygen, water, energy, and food without giving anything back.
Even executing "non-contributors" by dumping them out an airlock would probably not be as grim as the reality: Their bodies would contain water and raw materials that would be wasted if they were simply thrown out into space. More likely, they would be executed by some means that is as quick and non-messy as possible while preserving all the "useful resources" for recycling, although I would not expect the choice of means to be influenced by compassion - it might be excruciatingly painful, even if it is quick.
Many people today have experience with performance quotas in their jobs, and some companies have a policy where they fire the lowest 10% - thus forcing everyone to work continuously harder to stay employed. I suspect a similar policy would apply here, except the bottom 10% (or whatever other number) loses more than their paycheck. Rather, you might have states where the citizens are terrorized into working as hard as possible for "the community" (which really just means its rulers and their associated elites) under threat of being recycled - like "The Jungle" in space.
Fortunately, integrated systems can evolve into something looser, provided their resource base expands. The core could remain integrated, and yet allow for broader expansions on a more loosely-controlled basis, which brings us to the next type of FSRI.
(ii) Type 2: Mutual
A mutual FSRI has a common core infrastructure, managed either cooperatively or in integrated fashion, but also has an extended domain of locally-owned and operated systems whose controls may be partially or entirely independent. This type requires more abundant resources than an integrated FSRI, because some efficiency may be sacrificed for the greater level of autonomy and flexibility, but as an FSRI the resource environment is still poorer than what would exist in the PIRE domain. This type will grow faster in size and population than an integrated system, provided the resources are sufficient.
Ultimately, all FSRIs with natural potential for higher-level commerce would probably evolve into (or through) the mutual model, since it would be impractical for an integrated system to keep up with growth at a significant rate. Some would even begin as mutual, though they would have to already be in a position to exploit a substantial level of traffic. So we can speculate that initial mutual systems would be in LEO and cis-lunar space, with settlements near Mars and asteroid swarms growing into them.
Lagrange point settlements would only develop in this direction if they became interplanetary way-stations - otherwise, low-traffic or deliberately isolated states would likely remain integrated. The rate at which a state would progress from integrated to mutual would, I think, depend on the relative availability of resources and rate of immigration, so we can expect LEO to be first, and subsequent destinations later.
Mutual FSRIs are the most hopeful type of FSRI for liberal democracy, as they are analogous to how we already live: Public infrastructure connecting and supporting private property. Given the ability of private modules to survive independently for a significant period of time, this would greatly dilute the power of authorities who manage the central infrastructure, even if that power is still substantial. In fact, it seems like an ideal basis for federalism.
Still, the level of regulation and control would be much greater than one would experience in a terrestrial republic: You are in a fragile environment where a single act of incompetence, sabotage, or terrorism could effectively end the society, even if some people survived and escaped to safety. So transportation, immigration, economics, and daily life would still be regulated to a remarkable extent, even if the government is quite lawful and democratic - the technocracy would tend to wield the effective power, even though large-scale political decisions would be made by elective government.
Imagine you are in a spacecraft on approach to such a settlement: As traffic to the previous kind of FSRI is much less, these would be much less of an issue. You would have to perform maneuvers to give controllers full visual confirmation of the size, shape, and external protrusions of your craft, including the nature and integrity of your docking apparatus. They will verify from a distance what your mass and density are, and check them against your transmitted manifest.
Then you will be met by an intermediary craft at a distance that conducts health, safety, and security inspections, verifying that you're not a Trojan horse that is going to blow up or take over their settlement; a sick ship that is going to infect their people; or a smuggler trying to bring in contraband, illegal immigrants, or criminal elements.
You will relinquish control of your craft on approach using standard protocols, so their guidance system can berth you into the dock. This will not be like driving into a parking lot - not for a very long time. When docking occurs, the ship's systems and the central systems will establish a standard relationship, your needs worked out, and the veracity of your electronic documentation established against the actual functioning of your machinery.
At that point, you would provide extensive insurance documentation, standard waivers, End User License Agreements for the settlement's various systems and infrastructure, understanding of rights and laws, pay all fees and taxes, and then sign documents informing you of where you are allowed to go, how long you are allowed to be there, and purchasing or being issued your resource accounts for energy, water, food, etc. etc. if you are not already a citizen.
Once everything had been processed and verified, then you could open your airlock and enter the broader environment - and confront the rest of the (electronic) paperwork awaiting you. For instance, you might have to pay surcharges or file additional documentation for traveling beyond your designated part of the public space, using more resources than expected, or hosting a party that requires reprogramming local environmental systems for the additional burden. And for both liability and security purposes, you would probably have to sign entire phone books of paperwork to go outside in a space suit.
Criminal justice would probably be stark and unsympathetic, but not to the same extent as with integrated systems. We can surmise that penalties would consist of fines for the vast majority of offenses; exile, either temporary or permanent, if practical; or in the worst cases, just throwing people out the airlock or some other readily-available means of killing. However progressive the values of the founders, small societies usually default to capital punishment, so we can expect that that will be a fixture even in otherwise high-minded cultures.
I do not, however, expect a mutual FSRI to execute people for economic reasons: Using more resources than you contribute or pay for would probably just get your ass kicked out, and your name listed on some kind of blacklist so other "respectable" settlements don't accept you. Still, I expect this type of environment will be the most comfortable, humanistic, and aesthetically pleasing FSRI.
Even though they would be orderly and comfortable, such states could politically run the gamut from "traditional" totalitarianism - i.e., exerting power through military and secret police mechanisms - through authoritarian republics, constitutional monarchies, democratic constitutional republics, all the way to laissez-faire systems whose only purpose is to facilitate organized trade (i.e., "space bazaars").
(iii) Type 3: Ad Hoc
The third type of FSRI is "Ad Hoc," which encompasses states that are haphazard physical or political agglomerations of privately-owned and privately-controlled habitats, with minimal or no centralized infrastructure. These are the "libertarian" or anarchic societies, in which we can expect that everyone is probably armed in some way, extremely jealous of their resources, and given to a continuous state of low-level violence, petty thuggery, and general poverty juxtaposed against a few examples of lavish wealth.
For these to exist requires a nontrivial population, so they would likely coexist in the vicinity of mutual FSRIs, albeit just beyond whatever the boundaries of regulated space happen to be. Enterprising merchants, privateers (yes, I am talking about space pirates), stateless individuals, criminals, political radicals, gangsters, and poor, ignorant people with the misfortune of being born there will populate such places.
We can expect them to develop a symbiotic (and occasionally parasitic) relationship with the mutual FSRIs, taking in some of the people who either can't or won't live or operate their businesses there, while providing the citizens of the more organized communities with a steady supply of whatever vices their respective cultures try to suppress. Limited warfare or police actions against Ad Hoc FSRIs are easily imaginable, if a more organized state is provoked by some of its members.
Members of Ad Hocs may have nothing in common other than a desire to remain independent of external authority, making them similar in some ways to the Confederacy - and possibly in more ways than one, since it's entirely within the realm of possibility that some of these states will practice slavery (although not necessarily race-based). It may be the case that some despotic integrated FSRIs align together into an Ad Hoc FSRI state, even if they are physically distant.
Although the Ad Hoc condition satisfies the libertarian conception of "freedom," it does not satisfy any version of it that pertains to the reality of how people live: Not only would all the same trials and tribulations of nature apply, but everyone would be constantly struggling to survive against the unchecked predatory behavior of other people. The result, as to be expected, would be a very high mortality rate, a high degree of poverty and violence, and even the "successful" people would have to live in fortresses to avoid being torn to pieces by all the elements conspiring against them. That is, unless they bought their way into a mutual state, or founded their own integrated FSRI.
"Government," such as it exists, would be loosely organized and based around the will of the "leading men" - i.e., the top bosses and merchants - and the will of anyone else would be effectively irrelevant except as an environmental condition taken into consideration only in the most cynical terms. As a result, we could expect that culture would tend to be very conservative in the traditional sense of venerating warriors and cunning businessmen, and also in the degree of paranoia and distrust shown toward others (especially outsiders).
"Justice," such as that exists, would consist of the victim killing the perpetrator; barring that, a mob shoving the suspected perpetrator out an airlock; or barring that, the local Boss having his henchmen "take care of it" to avoid the crime becoming a disruption to business. Mob hysteria or bigoted massacres of ethnic or religious minorities is bound to eventually occur in such societies. Ad Hoc states would remain exactly that until absorbed by the growth of more organized states - the prospect for internal change would be minimal to nonexistent.
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II. Planetary & Input-Rich Environments (PIRE)
A PIRE is either a settlement on a significantly-sized body with abundant resources, or else a free-space or small-body colony in a rich local environment. Major examples would be the Lunar surface, Martian surface, Ceres, Jovian system, and Saturn system, with Uranus and Neptune systems being ambiguous cases because they are so far from the Sun that energy might make them effectively isolated despite having an abundance of volatiles like water ice and organic compounds.
(i) Type 1: Planetary
A planetary PIRE would include the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and large gas giant moons like Callisto or Titan. Although the Moon and Ceres are not planets, they are sufficiently massive, and appear to contain enough local resources, that a diverse variety of settlements could locate on their surfaces and not only survive, but flourish. This is the key distinguishing characteristic of a PIRE: It has enough indigenous resources that growth is straightforward once the infrastructure for exploiting those resources is operational.
In other words, PIREs are ultimately capable of full economic independence. Unlike an FSRI, a PIRE - once its internal economy is up and running - will not bleed to death without some level of external input. The available resources are sufficient to allow indefinite survival and growth, although it would still require hard work, creativity, and no small amount of luck. The result will be "New Worlds," not just settlements or boondocks kingdoms.
For instance, Mars: Let's say that a scalable, modular technology exists for freeing oxygen and water from Martian regolith, and that this technology becomes smaller and cheaper over time - a reasonable assumption, given the enormous economic pressures likely to be applied to the problem once people's lives depend on it. This means that a Mars settlement will move toward decentralization of life support much more quickly than an FSRI, and so there would be much more fertile ground for liberal democracy.
In fact, we can say that because of the likely abundance of resources, politics will be much less dependent on economics, and bear more on the unique cultural dynamics that spring from whatever combination of ethnic groups and political ideals happen to comprise a given settlement. This means a much more vibrant social and political ferment, much quicker population expansion, and (both fortunately and unfortunately) much more regular occurrence and resolution of disputes, whether politically or militarily.
Despite these advantages, there may still be quite a lot of regulation over and above what most people are accustomed to, even in China: Before you are permitted to have a child, expect to have to already have built the added oxygen, water, energy, and food capacity to the environmental systems - enough capacity to handle its entire life cycle, not just what it will consume as an infant. And since more people may want to have children than the system could support, expect the choice of who gets to have them to be made politically.
This might be done by lot, by auction, by election, by arbitrary genetic standards, or by fiat in a more authoritarian state. Nevertheless, eventually the marginal increase needed to support an additional life would become small enough that standards would ease, and eventually regulation would disappear altogether except insofar as people have developed a cultural attachment to it (e.g., traditions).
Again, I should remind you that although this is a very free condition for a space colony, PIRE settlements will still require a level of management and responsibility that would make an average terrestrial inhabitant feel like a prisoner. The point is that in the process of moving toward greater wealth and freedom, new social ideas and technologies will come into being that will enliven all mankind.
(ii) Type 2: Orbital
Real photograph, BTW:
An orbital PIRE is one located in a region of space full of useful resources, and is either in free space or on a small body requiring very low delta-v to escape from. The most profound example would be the Saturn system, which is a proverbial treasure horde of volatiles and organic compounds, all just floating around or sitting loosely on the surfaces of small bodies. The Jovian system might also qualify, although radiation is a big problem, and as stated Uranus and Neptune may have issues having sufficient energy.
While Titan qualifies as a planetary PIRE because it has nontrivial gravity and a thick atmosphere, most of the Saturn system can be taken as a single orbital PIRE - a region where a cohesive and awesomely wealthy civilization could arise. In fact, I'm of the opinion that the Saturn system will ultimately become the center of human civilization, with the inner planets having less and less relevance, but that is in the far-future, many centuries from now.
As I said earlier, the basis of a PIRE is that its resource environment is so rich that much less control is necessary to survive and flourish. In fact, due to the abundance of organics, growing food may be a lot easier than it is for even Martian settlements, providing they are able to harness diverse forms of energy from the system and not rely on dim solar input or shipments of radioactive material from abroad. Fusion power would be enormously helpful, but not actually necessary.
Still, there is a danger in being too rich: Rigorous political freedom and social innovation are not really the provinces of people who swim in wealth and comfort, especially when those advantages are already obvious in a society's formative years.
In early American history, the wealthy, comfortable place to be (for white people, of course) was Virginia; Massachusetts, however, was a cold, unmannered place full of ruffians, and its cultural heart, Boston, was a shithole. And yet the heart and soul of the American Revolution, whose principles have animated the best ideals in this country ever since, largely came from Massachusetts, while Virginia politely walked off to join the Confederacy and has since then been (shall we say) less than remarkable in its contributions to American society.
So, wealth and comfort are not that important: Balance is. The progress of a "Ring civilization" around Saturn could go in any number of directions, and would be speculative beyond even the scope of this diary - there are simply too many variables. But I think it would be reasonable to conjecture that it would be remarkably wealthy, eventually conservative (though not wingnutty) in its social attitudes, and perhaps politically aristocratic.
A more likely scene for innovative politics would be the Main Belt asteroids, which may constitute any number of orbital PIREs depending on the local groupings of objects and their respective orbits around the Sun (except Ceres, which I've already identified as a planetary PIRE). These are sufficiently rich as a group, and yet diffuse enough in terms of individual objects, that you might see the kind of civilization develop as in the ancient Aegean: I.e., loose leagues of tightly-knit states competing, cooperating, or warring among themselves.
Pure speculation of course, but here is where I would expect to see the broadest political diversity, with both brilliant democracies that inspire people throughout the solar system, and nightmare states whose mere mention scares children. "If you don't clean your room, we'll send you to school in the Oryx Swarm."
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III. Nomadic
This category is not really a state in itself, but rather the de facto culture that arises among those who wander from state to state, perhaps frequenting Ad Hoc FSRIs without ever fully investing in them - although contact with planetary surfaces would probably be much more limited. It would include small groups all the way down to individuals, and there might be entire nomadic "tribes" of people with their own traditions who simply choose not to settle down anywhere.
Specific manifestations would run the gamut, but it's reasonable to say they would probably not have very advanced politics or education, and some of them might turn malignant - into (and this is not as laughable as it sounds) space barbarian hordes who collect tribute from more established settlements in return for not being attacked. Such extortion and the violence that backs it up might provoke some of the less humane organized states into acts of genocide against nomadic peoples associated with the attackers, even if most were not directly involved.
Most of their contacts would be with Ad Hoc FSRIs, but we can expect they would be prolific traders among any states who would have them and who are within range of their migrations. They would serve an important purpose, spreading ideas, commodities, and also keeping up the genetic diversity in places that might have trouble with in-breeding otherwise.
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IV. Conclusions
Space is gonna be really cool.