Space Colony Design interest level

What you wrote is an idea on which there should be an IBIS discussion and is part of the overall design. There is a myriad of assumptions in your statements that may or may not be true and they may or may not be true in different alternative scenarios in the overall design. But, getting them written down in a structure provides a way of seeing the discussion and how that may affect design decisions.
But what your comment does point out is that even if you are not an engineer you can still participate in coming up with ideas, creating supporting or non supporting arguments, and researching alternatives.

On 09/25/2011 03:42 PM, GARY ANSORGE wrote: Social systems are something that people on the "ground" will likely develop themselves, drawing upon their ancestral heritage and modifying them for their specific applicability to the local environment. Establishing specific minimum laws and rights to workers in these environments might begin with what people must have for survival, such as "Every worker in space must be guaranteed free air, water, food, shelter, basic(to be defined) medical care and, at the end of their work contract, return to their point of hire(something like this was part of ARAMCOs package to its non-saudi employees, without the specific mention of air). This is somewhat socialistic but only minimally so. People must also be free to move from one employer to another at will, though they may lose some bonus packages(such bonus encouragement was also part of ARAMCO. Quit before your end of contract and the company would withhold tax coverage). Then there is education of the young. ARAMCO provided it to their employees and it was of exceptional quality, since even the CEOs kids were educated with the offspring of grunts.
Such minimum guarantees can set a standard for space workers that will benefit later arrivals and provide a gross outline for social construction, with room for lassaiz faire capitalism to communalist systems and some we've never considered, even in SciFi. Some asteroid settlements may be founded by several families, pooling their resources. I expect it will take a long time before individuals can go off on their own and claim a mineral resource to develop, like the silver/gold miners of old and of course, where there are miner entrepreneurs, there will be claim jumpers. I expect personal weapons will be the norm, since a million Kms to the nearest cop station,,,well, you get the picture.
Start with what has already worked(see; ARAMCO and Saudi Arabia), what has already been built(See; Biglow modules) and go from there.