system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: A colony on Mars would eventually declare independence.

I don't think this is a particularly strong argument against some nation establishing a colony on Mars. If Trump had come out saying, 'We're going to Mars!' rather than 'Space Force!' I would have had a very different reaction. I hope in my lifetime we see someone go there.

However . . . it seems to me like it would be difficult to maintain your nation's governmental authority on a colony 34 million miles away. Especially if that colony is established primarily to serve the needs of the colonizing nation. It's just the classic colonial problem, only replace the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with space. 

Not that this a serious impending worry. A self-reliant colony on Mars asserting it's own independence from the sponsor nation is so far in the future there's no point worrying about it. However, I just can't see how a colony designed for permanent human habitation on Mars would ever tolerate foreign political domination from a parent country millions of miles away. How long can you expect a Mar's farmer to submit to Earth taxes or send valuable raw materials back to Earth?

**EDIT: What am I not considering? How is it not just that deterministic?**
gpt
This is kind of tough to talk about unless we pin down some of the assumptions baked into it.  On a long enough time horizon, with enough advanced technology, maybe they would get to the point where the could reasonably be a self-sustaining, self-defending nation - but that isn't anywhere near feasible in the foreseeable future.

- Having the colony be self-sustaining is a _huge_ challenge.  You have to manufacture your own atmosphere, enrich your own soil, control your own weather, synthesize your own water, etc. in order to even have a shot at being self-sustaining.  We simply have no idea how to do that on the scale necessary to sustain a real colony; for the foreseeable future, so they will be tethered to Earth for resupplies.  Declare independence and everyone dies pretty quickly

- Even if you _can_ get to a single-generation self-sustaining colony, we don't actually know if people will be able to breed on Mars.  We know that fetuses can't gestate in space in lower order animals (like mice) because gravity turns out to be super important in that process.  Maybe Mars has enough gravity to allow for proper gestation, maybe it doesn't; if it doesn't, the colony will be dependent on new blood to keep it running, which would mean it would require tethers to Earth.  Declare independence and everyone dies in a generation.

- Even if you _can_ reproduce on Mars, can you get a large enough population to support the standing army you will need to defend yourself when you secede?  Even if we can be self-sustaining, producing those resources will be very difficult - you can't just plant a new field of crops for your growing population - you will need to build domes, hydroponics labs, create new air and water, etc.  Scaling up is very difficult, and until you hit a critical mass that allows for defensive capabilities, any attempt to declare independence will result in you quickly being brought back into the fold when the Marines show up on the next set of rockets.

Sure, maybe _eventually_ those problems can be solved, but that basically requires us to invoke hitherto unknown and unimagined technological advances, and if you allow for that the CMV has no bounds and can't really be argued.