[victorbjorklund]

Yeah, but we're not talking about cities. There will be a lot of time before you can establish a city with thousands of people on another planet. What we're talking about here is the first step where you and a few people go into space with a very uncomfortable spaceship and maybe establish a base on a planet which is probably just gonna have the bare minimum to survive. We're not talking about cities in our lifetime. So at that point if you're one of the first going you are not going to a city. So you're really living in more luxury in the wilderness of Siberia or the Amazon and the government there is not gonna bother you if you are just living there alone in the middle of nowhere interacting with nobody because the goal was to get away from all the politics and stuff.

[cosmic_cheese]

Right, but usually part of the end goal of going out to settle a frontier isn’t just to get away from the status quo, but to build something bigger in the process. You’re right that governments aren’t going to care about just you living out in the middle of nowhere, but they will care once it grows into something significant, and that renders the whole thing moot. No point in building something up if it’s guaranteed to be snatched away.

Of course, that can happen to some off-world settlement that took generations to build too, but it’s not a given and your chances of retaining sovereignty are much better.