Have you read much Le Guin by any chance? This is a theme I've seen in her work.

Could you mention some books?

It's a big part of "the word for world is forest". A colony on one planet has essentially become self governing, until one day a ship delivers an instantaneous communication device, at which point the planet is back under imperial control. There's more to the story than that ofc

There's also "The Dispossessed", where an anarchist movement travels to a distant planet in order to set up their own government.

> anarchist movement > set up their own government

I'm pretty sure I get what you mean but I found that funny.

One has to use words for contrast, lest the fish who don’t know what water is get confused.

It's a poor summary anyway.

The Dispossessed describes an anarchist society on the impoverished moon of a verdant planet, and a scientist's struggle to reconcile his anarchism with his wish to further his research, which requires more resources than the anarchist society can provide. It is one of my favourite books.

I also don't remember distant communication being relevant for The Word for World is Forest. That's far more about the conflict between the natives and the colonizers, and passive vs. aggressive societies.

Distant communication is what establishes the setting in "Forest". At the very beginning, it is stated that the colony is 27 light years away - a frontier - and as the story progresses, there are hints that this is one of the reasons why the colonists can get away with brutalizing the local population, going far beyond the mandate that they have.

And then when they get the ansible midway through the story along with an inspection party that promptly reports their findings back to Earth, they start getting a steady stream of orders banning their various practices - slavery, violent reprisals etc. And when the local administration tries to implement some of those bans, the more hard-minded colonists deliberately provoke the natives into an open uprising by massacring their village. So it's a major plot driver, too.

It's not a contradiction. Anarchists oppose states and hierarchies in general, not governments as such.

Anybody dreaming of Mars colonies should keep that in mind. As long as the Mars colony will be dependent on supplies from Earth, they will do what Earth wants. Once they are self sufficient, this will change.

C.f. the immigration-friendly early U.S. and its "close borders" and PR lottery approaches of today.

> But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate.

The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate or time to move military forces?

For instance, for your hypothetical interplanetary empire: How could a capital, with a military that can move at 1% light speed, effectively rule over a colony one light month away if the worst it could do for ten years is send a nasty letters over radio?

Well, yes. There are plenty of takes on this. The "Traveller" RPG has a nice one: distributed feudal confederation. There's a nominal emperor, but it's hugely important that he never do almost anything, because "his" empire is a lifetime across.

Nearly the only law is that you don't impede the mail system, and that you pay a small tax to support the fleet that will hammer you into the ground if you impede the mail.

You can hypothetically keep 120 military ships en route to the colony at all times so that a forceful response is always at most one month away.

> You can hypothetically keep 120 military ships en route to the colony at all times so that a forceful response is always at most one month away.

One problem with that idea is that either the king's forces would be spread very thin or they would be massively (and expensively) oversized.

Just make most of your economy based on mass manufacturing weapons and vehicles, problem solved

>> One problem with that idea is that either the king's forces would be spread very thin or they would be massively (and expensively) oversized.

> Just make most of your economy based on mass manufacturing weapons and vehicles, problem solved

That feels like "solution" that you spent little more time thinking through than it took you to write it. Those kind of things both unconvincing and have a very high probability of being wrong. I mean, you don't even mention trade-offs and there are obvious historical parallels that call your solution into question. Isn't one of the (many) reasons the Soviet Union collapsed is that is allocated too much of its economic capacity to military expenditures?

Biology and more specifically lifespan being fixed through human history seems like a great confounding factor here.

A 50 year trip isn’t such a big deal if people are living 100,000 years and have near perfect memory.

> > But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate.

> The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forces, or something else?

> For instance, for your hypothetical interplanetary empire: How could a capital, with a military that can move at 1% light speed, effectively rule over a colony one light month away if the worst it could do for ten years is send a nasty letters over radio? Having local forces isn't a good answer, because one of the easier paths to rebellion is for the leader(s) those forces to declare independence and make themselves kings.

Have assassins embedded in their chain of command, so poison or dagger is always just few metres away. And they know how short their rein as a king will be.

>> Having local forces isn't a good answer, because one of the easier paths to rebellion is for the leader(s) those forces to declare independence and make themselves kings.

> Have assassins embedded in their chain of command, so poison or dagger is always just few metres away. And they know how short their rein as a king will be.

I don't think that would be as effective as you think it would be. Why would your assassin be any more loyal than the other garrison forces? Especially when he's ten years away from any help or evacuation.

The rebellion would have to distribute its resources amongst an army large enough to hold a planet. At that scale, teams of dozens of people would be sufficiently motivated to kill whoever, if their reward is still some fraction of that.

Blackmail is a wonderful thing if you know how to use it. For example if would be assassin doesn't fullfil his duty a little bird can whisper his name to people who would very violently frown at would be assassin. Or have things that for his wellbeing should be left in shadows. Things that you would prefer not to see in the planetary governor or a general. It's good to have some disposable pawns to do some dirty work. Even better if they can't be connected to you.