Consitiutions of the High Frontier

(Typo in title left uncorrected to keep this in thread)

"babbler36" wrote:
>How do you the settlements in space would be organized? I think there would
>a central
government for each high planetary orbit. It would confederal than federal,
more like the UN,
the EU or Swizerland, than Australia, Canada or the USA.
>...
>Since the settlements are not physical connected, the central govenment
>could not
become overpower indivdual settlement government.
>They would regulate the internal politics of the settlement.

This must be a typo. How would a central government regulate the internal
politics of the settlements if it isn't overpowering? I think you meant that
it isn't overpowering, so it can't regulate the internal matters of each
settlement, just mediate the inter-settlement relations.

Are you familiar with the history of the 13 American states under the
Articles of Confederation?
"For fatuous proceedings and a low level of snarling debate to match what we
see today in the UN security council, one must go to the records of the
Continental Congress. That body was of no more consequence than the
assemblies in (the UN or League of Nations)
"The World Must be Governed" Vernon Nash

The government under the Confederation had no teeth, like the UN and the
League of Nations, and for the same reason: the bodies who originated those
confederacies deliberately made it so the confederacy is toothless so those
organizing bodies can still have their ways and do whatever they want,
whenever they want.
The UN is impotent to stop wars because it has no teeth, specifically
because the big 5 made it that way (UK, US, USSR, France, and the PRC).
The history of international relations shows undoubtedly that if there's no
central authority with legal authority over the separate nations, then the
rights of the people will be abused; Either by powerful economic entities
making unjust and undemocratic trade agreements, or by the members waging
wars among themselves which the confederate congress is impotent to do
anything about except maybe pass "resolutions".
Despite the apparent manifold excuses for wars, the one thing they all have
in common is that they result when single social units (tribes, cities,
nations states, etc) exercise "sovereignty" over each other. The only way
wars have stopped permanently is when these small units became equally
represented under a higher authority, and subject to the mediation decisions
of that higher authority.

The framers of the US constitution made the federal government powerful
deliberately so that it could arbitrate disputes between the states and stop
wars.
The federalists were very cognizant of the fine line between too much power
in the central governing authority, and too little; they had just come out
from under a dictatorship with sole supreme authority, and had muddled
through a decade of increasing strife and discord under a confederacy with
too little authority.
If you have any misgivings about the way the US has turned out, or any other
federalist government, then count it as lessone learned, and examples of
what not to do.

Loose confederacies with no central authority over disputes of the members
is a recipe for wars.
I shudder to think of the available energies and techniques for
concentrating and directing those energies that the members of a space
colony confederacy will have. Each will effectively have the power to be a
nuclear state, even if they don't build A-bombs.
No city or continent on Earth or colony in space will be safe if they have
the "sovereign right" to unilaterally use war to settle disputes and have
their own way by throwing their weight around.

As xenophile said, earlier and younger colonies will be different. Think of
the Panama Canal zone for an example.
We can only hope that things will be different from some "Company towns" in
the past: "Load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in
debt. St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go -- I owe my soul to the
company store!"

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