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Because it's cheaper to live on a f-ed up half-built construction site of a planet than it is to fight with entrenched interests on earth.

Same reason North America got colonized by religious extremists and weirdos.

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The free, abundant land choke full of natural resources was probably more important.

Only free if you discount the costs involved in carrying out genocide against the existing inhabitants. But your point stands, that cost was frequently born by the government, so from the perspective of individual settlers it was often free.

> But your point stands, that cost was frequently born by the government,

Who paid this government?

There was plenty of death and danger involved in colonizing a foreign land you've never been to with 16th-18th century era technology.

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