That's speculation. What if there were significant mineral resources, attractive tax rules, a large, highly motivated labor pool, and a lot of solar energy that could be harvested to drive that economy?

Could be a playground he couldn't pass up.

Of course, he might just be pushed out the airlock as soon as he annoys "the labor pool". Idealists who create remote colonies are in for disappointment. It were ever thus.

All of this, obviously, prophecized in Total Recall.

or any Tomino fiction, or really any fiction involving space colonization.

if a coup of some sort isn't spilling blood on the colonies, we can rest assured the tremor-like mars aliens will take care of them.