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Comment by browningstreet | Hacker News Reader

We already live in a police state. The federal, state and local infrastructure and resources are mind bogglingly massive. They have laws granting them near carte blanche rights and actions.

We are citizens of our country and we deserve a dignified existence. We are supposed to have rights, and they're being worn away, formally and informally, by our governments and megacorps acting like NGOs.

I'm sympathetic to the overwhelming horrors of drunks, drunk driving, violent actors, child abuse, child porn, economic crimes, etc.

I've done my calculus, and I got my vaccine and I wear my mask in the current circumstances of our pandemic. But in a similar calculus, what Apple has planned to subject a huge portion of our population to, by din of their marketshare in mobile and messaging. I personally can't accept the forces at play in this Apple decision, and I'm continually baffled by those who think this is overblown.

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I'd like to subscribe to your blog.

So what's next? There might be some time left to secure our rights on Mars...

Have you imagined what a near-future Mars colony will be like? You can't live on the surface, so it will be as high-tech and enclosed and cramped as a space station; an air-tight pressure vessel with no escape. It will have limited energy and resources so there will likely be rationing. It will be vulnerable to any pressure breach or loss of power, so can take no risks with mechanical failure, bad actors, disease spread, etc. so it will likely be sensored and surveilled all over. It will likely be funded in large part or entirely by private investors. Musk has estimated $500k for a ticket to go there and people have estimated $3Bn/year for 30 years to keep a base running with no economic return from that.

No government, no police, no Wild West "run them out of town" option. You think they're going to want to spend $500,000 return flight cost to send potential criminals away or just "let them be" in an environment like that?

The idea that you might be able to go there and "demand your freedom" without being a billionaire owner of the colony is ill-thought-out. Subjects will have no leverage and no options, and leaders will have billions sunk into it and demand obedience like a Navy Submarine.

Yes, I've thought about it. I was kind of hoping for a better suggestion.

However, I'd rather voluntarily subject myself to a dictatorship like that than believe all my life I have rights that are sacred, only to look up and find myself in an authoritarian panopticon.

I do harbor fantasies of some day collaborating on a new system of government, or at least laying the groundwork. It's not going to be Musk's planet forever, and the first generation of Martians will be volunteers who want the project to succeed. Which makes it more like the 13 original colonies than the Wild West.

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