Besides that, one shouldn’t have to be a hermit in order to avoid oppression.
Right now the cost for the government to send their agents to "the mountains" is trivial, the most remote you could possibly get is "a few hours commute and a helicopter ride". The government is more than willing to pay that price in important cases.
I think they imagine that space travel can increase that price to "months or years" and "expensive vehicles that support people during that time". Rather like how much it would have cost to send government agents to remote places hundreds of years ago.
(Personally I'm not particularly convinced, the number of habitable rocks in the solar system is small. Living not on a rock means you need to import resources. Maybe if we get interstellar travel).
Besides the infissibility for billions to do so in the next 2-3-5 centuries at least, it will probably also be the total opposite if/when it happens.
Those space colonies won't be like roaming around in some empty earth. It will be like living in some very close knit community on Earth, when everybody is monitored and depends on everybody else don't doing something stupid/suicidal to put the colony in danger...
>I see this as an inevitable outcome of technological development
Why would it be inevitable?
There are big show stopping issues which are only handwaved away atm with "but, progress" (as if technological development is boundless and creativity can bypass any hard constraint).
Some issues as so hard physics problems, that (BS like "Alcubierre drive" aside) would mean the best we could ever do would be "generation ships".
We’re also talking about hundreds or thousands of years here. It seems totally reasonable to me to assume that a private spaceship priced at ~$500,000 in 2021 dollars will exist by say, 2500.
Saying "a question of time, not physical limitations" however is the handwaving of physical limitations "because technology will advance" thing I wrote about.
Why would it be a question of time?
How is time gonna make "faster than light" travel possible, or bring the closest stars any closer than many light years?
If anything time has shown that space travel capability can go worse and languish completely for decades just as easily as some external force (like the Space Race in the Cold War, or easy excess credit to fund things like SpaceX today) makes it so -- it's still been 40+ years since we last went to the moon, and the US had let languish the capability to launch people into ISS for decades...
Regarding technological development, again, on a long enough timeline, I don’t think it’s much of a concern. Technologies will continue to develop, quickly or slowly. It hasn’t even been a century since we walked on the moon. Deriving trends from this short period of time is not particularly relevant.
Between one unhabitable planet and another, plus some gas giants, etc., where's that plenty of space? Unless we also handwaving terraforming into the equation too (as we'll do with carrying any significant number of people via spaceships as opposed to small scientific missions, the 9+ months travel time, space radiation, lack of resources to eat/drink/breath there, etc).
Plenty of space in our own solar system
After all, what can you hide behind floating in space, fully illuminated by the sun?
or something in which you can travel and survive living in space (mobile space habitat).
How will you overcome the lack of gravity causing muscle/bone-density loss?
assuming you camp out near the sun and derive power from solar - how do you get food and oxygen? you'll have to assume extreme air, water recycling, and some way of producing food.
Why do you think colonies in space will be different and not see “societal forces” emerge?
“It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish.”
Even if you could just “go off on your own into space”, you will likely need to transact with other humans in order to survive. Put differently, I think while it is an “option” in principle, it isn’t in reality.
In MBA land they call it BATNA. Best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
The more accessible opting out becomes, the more leverage regulator people will have when negotiating with the dominant social order.
Space travel like this is down the road, but it’s only a long road if you are thinking in terms of your own finite existence.
Also, opting out is in demand. From a more immediate perspective, I think that there is a lot of room for innovation around personal privacy and opting out. No system created by humans is permanent. More surveillance means that humans will create systems to subvert it or render it useless. This has already happened in many ways.
A system is nicer to its people when they are there voluntarily. These changes will also work to improve the quality of life of those in the system as well as those outside of it.
New World 2.0 isn’t coming.
Space is quite literally limitless from a human perspective; to assume that somehow human beings will make zero progress on space travel 500 or 1,000 years from now seems naive to me.
The progression from trains to cars is a good example. At first you had highly centralized, expensive transport. Then cars developed and became decentralized.
On a longer timeline, consider technologies like writing, or paper. Initially highly centralized, now so ubiquitous that we don’t even recognize them as technologies.
I’m basically just saying that on a long enough timeline, the chances that space transportation is controlled by a central authority seems nearly impossible.
I’d also imagine it’s far less exciting to live on a floating platform in the ocean than out in space. Certainly the marketing materials will be more appealing.
Obviously this won’t happen for centuries. But on the timeline of “future human existence”, it’s really not very long at all. I see this as an inevitable outcome of technological development, even if the Private Ownership of Spacecraft War of 2346 is bloody. That gives me hope for the future.