Governing Mars: Elon Musk’s Vision of Direct Democracy
by David Sims
HERE IS A RECENT quote from Grok (Elon Musk’s dedicated AI LLM on X):
Elon Musk has proposed that Mars should be governed by direct democracy, where Martians [human colonists from Earth, living permanently on Mars] would decide their own governance, rather than extending Earth’s national territories or adopting representative democracy. This idea has sparked a broad discussion on how Mars should be colonized and governed. Musk also suggested that uncrewed starships could land on Mars in about two years, with crewed missions potentially following in four years. The conversation includes skepticism about the feasibility of these timelines, concerns about replicating Earth’s governance issues on Mars, and excitement about the prospect of human expansion into space. Some individuals expressed interest in participating in Mars missions, while others debated the practicality and implications of such colonization efforts.
I say, let him. Give Elon a free hand in organizing the government of Mars. He’ll make mistakes, and he’ll correct them, if he retains the power to do it. If he doesn’t, he’ll have screwed humanity bigtime.
I’d rather Elon Musk be emperor of Mars than establishing over that entire planet an experiment in direct democracy. Why? Because an empire (organized as such) can experiment with direct democracy in one of its provinces, and see how it goes.
Elon might be ideologically convinced that direct democracy can only lead to Good Things. But there just is no substitute for actually doing the experiment. There have been many people (America’s Founding Fathers among them) who were convinced that direct democracy will invariably result in the population trying to defraud or harm each other, two-wolves-and-a-sheep style, while voting themselves bread and circuses until the commonwealth vanishes.
Maybe Elon is right where all those statesmen and philosophers were wrong, but I doubt it. Caution is required here. A Mars that is entirely under direct democracy will have no means of intelligent self-repair if that governmental system doesn’t work. It should be established initially as an empire, with someone honest (perhaps Elon himself) as the ruler. He can experiment with direct democracy in a semi-autonomous part of Mars, and see what happens.
It is indeed possible for a population that decides every issue by voting on it, by voting in accordance with their short-term interests, to drive their state over a cliff. It would be a good thing if there were someone with the power and with the inclination to prevent such a disaster.
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