Mars colonies will need significant resources imported to get started, with nothing, except data, and exhausted martian colony builders going the other way.
As a result, whoever is controlling the money flows and resource supply chains for the colony imports will have a strong hand in its development. This will be the case for quite some time until the colony can provide for its own material resources and a sustainable habitat for humans.
In a previous post, I looked at this concept briefly, with reflections on the American colonies and with more recent examples of Chinese influence in other nations due to its prolific financing and direct involvement in infrastructure projects overseas, lightly exploring the influence it buys with such action.
In this post, I expand further, asking some questions about factors which could influence and challenge independence and the boundaries of that community. I'll also discuss how necessary independence is, and the dangers of a politically independent colony, against a backdrop of previous and current space exploration, space-station contexts which encounter the same import dependence.
Is independence necessary?
I think the main risk of dependence, or at least weak boundaries, could lead long-term to a Mars colony that needs to cow-tow to a specific country on Earth or Earth in general. However, herein lies the difficulty - being a distant outpost to Earth, and reliant for a long time on human-power and material, equipment from Earth, full independence is quite difficult to imagine. In this respect, looking at independence or boundaries could not make sense to aspire to.
A model for spacefaring colonies could be the various orbiting laboratories, the 11 space stations which have come and gone over the last 50 years. Likely the most famous of which were Skylab, Mir and our current, longest-lived and much-loved ISS.
Initially in this space, there was independence with each country taking its own space station into orbit for orbital science. With the Americans, it was the Skylab - the only American-only space station which re-entered and burned up over Southern Australia in 11th July 1979. In the 3 manned missions which ran on Skylab, only American astronauts were present.
In later Mir-Shuttle missions, greater collaboration was seen between the US and Russian space agencies. In this programme, Astronauts hitched a ride on Roscosmos launch vehicles and Russian cosmonauts ascended on the shuttle to the Mir space station. This collaboration extended throughout the Mir programme, even with NASA launching an EO-20 docking module to facilitate easier docking of the space-shuttle and the Mir structure.
Some authors have made a proposition that the break up of the Mir station and the end of the life of ISS, along with a push from China and Russia to establish their own orbital labs signals an end to this long collaboration which had been started to be taken for granted as the de facto way forward.
After Skylab and Mir, the Russian and American space agencies came closer to collaborate further on the conception of the ISS. Along with many others, these partner nations came together to provide parts, components and whole modules along with launch capability to deliver these pieces to create the whole that is the present ISS.
When viewed in this way, it does beg the question for why to become independent in the long term. The ISS has flown for 20 years at this point, with discussions to extend the life another 10 years at the minimum. This subject is being debated at the highest levels in US government. This was all based on international cooperation.
Looking with this view, it could be said that it is more important that nations work together on whatever human missions to Mars are delivered in the end. Among the players who have openly discussed a serious Mars attempt, we have the Americans - with NASA, SpaceX making clear moves with their Artemis program and Starship respectively. Perhaps surprisingly, the Emirates nations, on the back of the success of their Hope orbiter, have also discussed a city on Mars by 2117 . Certainly once on Mars, i would think that if any colony did get into distress and needed support, I would hope that the others would pitch in and try to help.
In this way, the structure of any human Mars mission would need to embody collaboration and constructive engagement between contributing countries on Earth, and the Martian colony to ensure long-term sustainability.
Currency
Currency is a major factor in establishing trade relationships and the balance of power in the world. The other side of currency is the government debt which is linked to the issuance of currency. Looking back to the mid-previous-millenium colonial, era currency has given some stark warnings about importing material, particularly mineral wealth, and the rise in sudden hyper-inflation. In this the Spain Price Revolution and its South American 'adventures' of the 1600s are instructive.
Consider that the petrodollar was a critical part of the mid to late 20th century. This enabled the US economy to grow and dominate the middle decades because of the heavy, almost mandated use of dollars for energy economy, which at the time, was focused heavily on oil and gas. This means that the currency used can have a big impact on the power of the issuer of that currency.
However, because material will not be traded from Mars to Earth, contrary to what other authors have written, likely any currency changing hands from the colony will be for proprietary information, data sets originating from Earth, communications capability, and the value of supply chains which bring people and material to Mars only.
This suggests that rather than Martian colonies suffering because of the currency used in its construction and colony development, rather the issuing country could benefit significantly from the huge money flows in their denominated currency. Referring to the previous point, to help prevent significant imbalances between world economies because of this, international collaboration and spreading the cost and investment around between partner countries will be an essential consideration.
In the short term, I would think all the accounting, finance and money transfers would be completed by Earth based companies, handling operations for off-world subsidiaries. In this way, all
Additionally, the efficiency of delivery of financing and payments around this Martian enterprise will be an important one to ensure that an expensive project will not incur excessive cost for simply finance and transaction management.
Taxation
Taxation has caused plenty of problems in colonies. I keep referring to England-United States as a fledgeling country in previous articles but the example is instructive. In 1775 - the early US government tabled a motion with the colonial delegates from England because of the taxes levied but without fair representation of the colony states in English Parliament. The Americans were tired of paying out taxes but not receiving due consideration by government making the laws.
To contrast, this isn't such a strong example when applied to a prospective Martian colony because the US was a jewel in the English crown because of the, by then, rich resources of consumable commodities. Luxuries which has been bringing handsome profits to the shores of England. Tobacco, cotton, sugar etc. Other cash crops - arriving to England via ports in London, Bristol, Harwick to feed a hunger for finer cloths, a sweet tooth, and snuff.
Around this time, Englands treasury had been ransacked because of costly wars with European countries - more specifically, the French/ Austrian coalition - for colonies overseas (specifically war in Bengal - India, in Quebec - Canada, and for consolidation in the West Indies. most of these occurring 15 years or so before the Americans mounted their independence effort). At the point that American independence came to a head, the crown had levied extra taxes against the colonies in a cynical move to extract extra tax from a colony seen as rich and able to pay.
However, the colonies were quite burdened themselves - in that they didn't have such resources and still faced challenges of public health crises and piracy. (what was the state of the US colony states in the years prior to 1774.
Not to go too much into a history lesson but this is a constructive point: taxation from 'overseas', outside the colony can be a forcing function on the colony, oppressing the people and extracting value amounting to a costly pound of flesh.However, to counter this point - there needs to be value to be able to tax. This lever is considerably lacking from a Martian colony because trade in the traditional sense is not feasible because a Martian colony would be entirely import dependent.
On the other hand, considering Mars as a colony to Earth like the US was a colony to England is not a tenable point. The afore-mentioned lack of resources on Mars and no intention of exporting back to Earth removes a material incentive for coercion.
How do you tax colonists at an individual level? If we consider that some of the crew may be American citizens we can consider that wherever they are, they must pay tax to America. Per the IRS, American citizens abroad are still subject to US taxation on their worldwide income, no matter where they live or work. As discussed here - even astronauts pay taxes. The heavens of space do not count as a tax free, tax exemption zone, and Americans must file from there too.
For native Martians, there could be an issue of citizenship, relating to taxation. In keeping with the American example, the children can automatically take up American citizenship no matter where they are born. In this case, such children will not be exempt from paying taxes to the US.
However, there are some instructive examples which may apply to our colony. Specifically, these same US citizens can file for a FEIE - Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. With such, the colonists can avoid double-taxation on their income. Of course tax will not be such a problem initially because most if not all colonists will return home in the earlier cycles.
Once native colonists are born, and incoming colonists start to stay more and more on Mars, a local economy will need to establish. Within this, the roots of a taxation system can arise. This is when the FEIE arrangements can come into play. Similarly, countries like the UK have arrangements with the US on tax.
Trade/ Supply relationships
There can be an intimate relationship between nations through their trade relationships. These relationships can be characterised by the dynamics they display. China has gained a reputation as the workshop of the world because of the heavy trade surplus - being a massive exporter to other nations. This has been an almost steady-state expectation for some time.
However, as shown in the recent oil price crash of 2020, the significant disruption in supply chains due to lockdown, enabled China to step up exports because of shut-downs in other countries. Other suppliers and key value chain operators have had to renegotiate and redirect their flows to prevent going bust. There are some comical and unexpected examples of fairly quick re-directs of resources, leading to restaurant suppliers, airline suppliers, to pivot their supply chains to supply private consumers.
We see also through governmental sanction programs how delicate and non-obvious trade relationships can be disrupted. The more obvious is red-list countries like Iran, Syria, etc.
But there are also others which have felt the wrath of US sanctions, such as China - even though they are the second largest holder of US public debt. Seen in this way, China is one of the US biggest supporters, from a financing perspective. In this way, no country is on their own fully, with a borrower and a lender inextricably linked.
Law
Thankfully for citizens of a Martian colony, there is good news on the legal basis for a colony. There is already precedent for off-world legal agreements. And that is the Outer Space Treaty which had been developed some years ago. This agreement has the key precepts for a Martian colony - made of a crew of many nationalities - and had been laid down some time ago, having had plenty of development over that time.
The outer space treaty was created and ratified by space faring nations. This is also a co-developed document with collaboration from nations, further underlining the need for collaboration instead of ruthless independence/ self-dependence.
This means that there is an opportunity to avoid jostling that can come between selection of the 'brand' of law used in legal proceedings, choosing between Admiralty Law and Common Law for example (the former not having need for Jury trials).
Politics
Against the backdrop of above considerations - currency, trade (albeit lop-sided), collaboration on exploration, we can see some clear arguments against a colony that stands completely alone. Part of this is feasibility, part is pragmatism - standing alone far from Home, doesn’t help achieve anything. These points also nibble around the edge of a serious room-elephant: politics.
The efforts of the outer space treaty attempt to nullify political differences. This is designed in the pursuit of the lofty goal of international collaboration and human expansion into the cosmos.
As it stands, even with the aforementioned plans for independent, individual-country-deployed space stations, I can imagine there is some bandwidth for collaboration and mixed country crews deploying on missions on them, much like the ISS today. Admittedly this perhaps opens the door to greater emphasis with science directives from the host nation —> “It’s my station, I’ll do what I want with it”.
The problem with politics comes when we discuss a larger colony on Mars into the future. Initially, during its early years, I would expect either the Outer Space Treaty or some similar document to apply, simply mapping over the logic and rules applied on the ISS and similar contemporary space missions.
However, when the colony expands and grows to the size of 100,000 or a million people, politics starts to come into play. This is not because of a desire to express political views in space: I would think the colonists would still foster the ideals of the founders. Survival and thriving amid hazards being key. However, the need to efficiently organise a colony to drive allocation of resources and the development would necessitate some group leadership and hierarchy within the colony. Herein the root of politics starts to take.
Here we move from science outpost to politically active colony. By having a colony with political choices, the colony can choose to have political views opposed to Earth. Dangerous could be a good word to use here. Ar the lightest level, this could cause terse relations and friction. Writ large however, this could rather spell out an “Us” / “Them” tribal politics to arise. Herein game theory can start to take hold, specifically games in networks, and the prisoner’s dilemma when applied to stronger/ weaker group dynamics. This poses significantly greater trouble for Earth and Mars, future twin seats of humanity.
You can reach me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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