History Main / LibertariansInSpace

This can be related to PrivatelyOwnedSociety if we're talking the big-L type of Libertarianism and this society is presented as an ideal, rather than a form of dystopia.

* {{Zig Zagged|Trope}} in ''Slow Train to Arcturus'', as while we see some of the societies leaving what can justly be caused repression it is hard to imagine any vaguely functioning benevolent government not wanting to see [[AcceptableTargets heavily armed white supremacists or North Korea's leadership cadre]] sent ''very'' far from Earth.

* Travis J.I. Corcoran put out the ''Literature/{{Aristillus}}'' series in order to bring his vision of this trope to fruition in a hard science fiction world. While it owes a lot to [[Creator/RobertAHeinlein Heinlein]], this series is chock full of enough new ideas, combined with ample libertarian political science, economic, and philosophical thinking, to arguably take this trope to the furthest extent yet seen. Not the least of which is taking the libertarian affinity for guns UpToEleven and arming most of the Lunar colony with huge anti-materiel rifles which they use to fend off invading earth forces.

* The terrestrial version appears in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' with International City. Ironically this is why Antarctica is used to house the MasterComputer that runs the rest of the world, because no nation can be trusted with physical ownership.

* The Antarctica version (see RealLife) appears in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' with International City. Ironically this is why Antarctica is used to house the MasterComputer that runs the rest of the world, because no nation can be trusted with physical ownership.
* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. Lampshaded by Captain Janeway regarding the inhabitants of the Asteroid Belt (and in particular their radical faction, the Maquis).

* Creator/PaulMcAuley's novels ''The Quiet War'' and ''Gardens of the Sun'' pit an eclectic variety of small colonies in the Solar System against the growing aggressions of reactionary and "Gaian", ecologically [[KnightTemplar templaresque]] Earth [[SpaceFillingEmpire superstates]] Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community -- whose main objections are to the wild transhumanist genetic engineering freely allowed in the colonies. It starts to play more with it as the story progresses, however -- it becomes clear that there are repressive strains amongst the Outer colonies, some of which turn out to be ''very'' important to the story, while other developments make clear that the Earth superstates overall aren't quite so bad as it first seemed -- the perspective was skewed because almost every viewpoint character on Earth was associated with Greater Brazil, who turns out to ''not'' be representative in just how extreme their anti-democracy sentiments are.
* Kim Stanley Robinson's ''Mars Trilogy'' sees Earth [[MegaCorp multinational corporations]] trying to muscle in on the emerging Martian society, whose people want to be left alone to build their new world their own way.

* Creator/JohnVarley's ''Literature/SteelBeach'' features a Heinlein-inspired Libertarian group trying to build a {{Generation Ship|s}}. The ship is even named ''The Creator/RobertAHeinlein''.
* Creator/EricFrankRussell's ''The Great Explosion'' features two unusual versions. The first, a former PenalColony, has developed a ruthless, dog-eat-dog society based on a mixture of ''laissez faire'' and MightMakesRight. The second is a quasi-socialist libertarian utopia based on passive resistance, civil disobedience and the teachings of Ghandi. Their motto is "Freedom--I Won't!"
* Creator/DavidWeber has used this as backstory a couple of times, especially in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' universe, where whole planets have been settled by, respectively, artists, American ranchers, gangsters, genetically engineered humans, and a group who believed technology was Evil. The Solarian League is the giant, sprawling nation who looks down on other star nations, OFS is the grasping military arm of the League, and there's a lot of corrupt planetary corporations doing things behind the scenes.
* Travis J.I. Corcoran put out the ''Literature/{{Aristillus}}'' series in order to bring his vision of this trope to fruition in a hard science fiction world. While it owes a lot to Heinlein, this series is chock full of enough new ideas, combined with ample libertarian political science, economic, and philosophical thinking, to arguably take this trope to the furthest extent yet seen. Not the least of which is taking the libertarian affinity for guns {{Up To Eleven}} and arming most of the Lunar colony with huge anti-materiel rifles which they use to fend off invading earth forces.
* Michael Z. Williamson's ''Freehold'' duology is about the Freehold of Grainne, a libertarian's paradise in comparison to the corrupt and dying United Nations-controlled Earth.
* The Dorsai of the ''Literature/ChildeCycle'', a planet with [[OneProductPlanet the greatest mercenaries among the Fourteen Worlds]]. It's people are fiercely independent, free as long they do nothing to harm and respect their freedoms. Interestingly, the Dorsai has problems from this - their government have almost little power compared to the other Worlds.
* In ''Literature/{{Gradisil}}'', many of Earth's rich have migrated to space habitats, collectively known as "Upland".

* In F. Paul Wilson's La Nague Federation series there are two planets that live by differing strains of a philosophy called KYFHO (Keep Your Fucking Hands Off). Every inhabitant of Flint is [[ProudWarriorRace armed to the teeth]] and deadly, while their philosophical siblings on Tolive are {{Actual Pacifist}}s
* Creator/HBeamPiper's Lone Star Planet/A Planet For Texans was colonized by people who are trying to live the romantic ideal of Texas, IN SPACE!. Everyone goes armed, and killing a politician is not illegal unless the politician's heirs can convince the court he didn't need killing (this is rare). Four Day Planet, sometimes bound in the same volume, may count as well. The colony was started as a company town by a mining corporation which abandoned it, but the hardiest and most independent colonists stayed to make a go of it.
* S.A. Swann's ''[[Literature/HostileTakeoverSwann Hostile Takeover]]'' trilogy takes place primarily on the planet Bakunin, where any kind of social organization that doesn't call itself a government is allowed.
* Zig-zagged in ''Slow Train to Arcturus'', as while we see some of the societies leaving what can justly be caused repression it is hard to imagine any vaguely functioning benevolent government not wanting to see [[AcceptableTargets heavily armed White Supremacists or North Korea's leadership cadre]] sent ''very'' far from Earth.
* In ''Literature/TechnicHistory'' the MerchantPrince Van Rjn is definitely this though he shows a slight MoralMyopia as he is willing to use his own resources to coerce those he think need to be coerced.
** [[BirdPeople Ythrians]] in general, in fact they [[HumansThroughAlienEyes think]] government almost [[ValuesDissonance barbaric.]]
*** One Ythrian though gives a paradoxically libertarian argument for loyalty to the Terran Empire; the empire is far away, cannot concentrate enough on local affairs to be overbearing by human standards and provides security in an economic manner without the demands an independent local government would have to make.
* Creator/IanMcDonald's "Luna: New Moon". Contract law governs relations on the moon. There is no criminal law. The Five Dragons (oligarchs) rule the moon.

* ''Voyage from Yesteryear'' by Creator/JamesPHogan. A probe is sent to Alpha Centauri containing a genetic bank to escape an impending world war. RaisedByRobots in a PostScarcityEconomy, the colonists form a community where money and authoritarianism are meaningless. This causes problems when the authoritarian Earth governments established during the war decide to send an expedition to bring them back into the fold, leading to severe CultureClash.

* A small L version is ''Industrial Revolution'' by Creator/PoulAnderson. A privately-owned asteroid-mining company is on the verge of success at the same time as a Social Justice Party comes to power back on Earth. They try to arrange an 'accident' with a MisguidedMissile to force the miners off their space station. The incident is related in flashback years later after the miners have fought a war of independence.
* Creator/LarryNiven's ''Known Universe'' series has the libertarian Belters versus the statist U.N.-controlled Earth. While Niven prefers the Belters, he recognizes the the government on Earth is struggling with massive overpopulation and is trying to do the best it can for the inhabitants. Some of the works by his fans [[{{Flanderization}} go over the top]] and show the Earth as evil and over-controlling and deliberately trying to breed initiative out of humans.
* ''Planet of Fear'' by Paul [=McAuley=]. The protagonists are the [[AlternateHistory Soviet]] [[VenusIsWet naval crew of an ekranoplan on Venus]]. The American libertarians are regarded as pirates, and assumed to be at fault when the personnel of a Soviet outpost go missing.

* ''Series/Babylon5'' touches on this idea somewhat, in that Earth slowly ([[FromBadToWorse and then more quickly]]) becomes an oppressive place, and also more heavy-handed toward its offworld colonies. Mars probably takes the brunt of this, but it is implied that even [[spoiler: pre-coup]], most colonies are at least taxed very heavily by Earth, and labor strikes are banned (in theory, only when they endanger a military base or operation. In practice, after the Earth-Minbari War, the law authorizing the suppression of strikes has been invoked more often than that). [=EarthGov=]'s intrusions affected the Babylon 5 station adversely as well -- until Sheridan [[spoiler:decisively declares the station's independence.]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'': the Duncanites, derived from the Ares Conspiracy that initiated the terraforming of Mars and were chased off to the Belt and Jupiter's Trojan asteroids for eco-terrorism, which turned them off the idea of "statism". Divided into the "Green Duncanites" who are attempting the same thing on Europa, the "Red Duncanites" or "Trojan Mafia", and the nomadic Gypsy Angels.

* The in-universe official history of ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones'' says that corporations built privately owned cities first on Earth, and then on Mars, which were populated with human-animal hybrids called Vectors. Then Earth's obsolete bioconservative governments started a nuclear war with the Corp Towns and Earth was sterilized in the crossfire. Though it's obvious to most readers that at least six of the seven {{Mega Corp}}s that own the Solar System 700 years later are effectively dictatorial governments as oppressive as many 20th century countries, with the possible exception of [[http://hcsvntdracones-game.tumblr.com/post/149521040593/im-betting-most-of-my-streamers-have-traveled the Corp whose primary products are espionage and assassinations.]]

* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' presents two variants on this in its factions: the Morgan Industries faction represents the more corporate, market-and-business-oriented vision of Space Libertarianism, while the Spartan Federation is the more "rugged gun-nut survivalist" brand (which makes occasional references to Heinlein with stuff like bases named Farnham's Freehold). The Alien Crossfire expansion adds the Nautilus Pirates, who in gameplay terms are a clone of the Spartans ON THE SEA!, and in story terms are a breakaway of the Spartans who thought being sea pirates would be cool.

* In ''Webcomic/EscapeFromTerra'' Ceres and a number of other asteroids are anarcho-capitalist. In an early arc they fight off an attempted invasion by the straw socialist United World of earth.
* ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'' presented the idea that when there's no frontier to explore and expand into [[http://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=191 culture begins to rot and erode.]]

* ''Literature/InGoldenWaters'', a SharedUniverse created by the users of the Website/SomethingAwful forums, is a DeconstructiveParody of seasteading, a proposed real-life terrestrial version of this trope (see "Real Life" below).

These are some of the sorts of people that might end up as SpaceCossacks.

This trope can cover the capital-L Libertarian ideology, which emphasizes both personal and civil liberties and laissez-faire capitalism, as Creator/RobertAHeinlein's works often did. There have, in fact, been numerous attempts by libertarians to [[StartMyOwn build countries in extreme environments]] very much in the spirit of the trope, many of which are described in the RealLife section below. The general idea, however, can also be more lower-case-l libertarianism, open to broader conceptions of liberty that needn't be, and indeed may challenge, the hyper-capitalist variety. Lower-case-l libertarianism includes ancoms, mutualists, and other libertarian socialists in space.

[[folder:Real life]]
* Seasteading is a similar concept that essentially involves building giant oil rig-style platforms or artificial islands in international waters and then claiming they are micro-nations. The ultimate expression of seasteading is the "Floating Island": free-floating city units (essentially concrete rafts with buildings on them) that connect into towns and small cities. This one has actually been attempted in real life, with varying levels of success.
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Rose_Island Republic of Rose Island]] was an attempt in 1968 by Italian casino magnate Giorgio Rosa to build a tourist resort in the Adriatic Sea just outside of Italian waters, styled as a tax-free libertarian paradise with UsefulNotes/{{Esperanto|TheUniversalLanguage}} as its official language. The Italian government seized the platform the following year and dynamited it, suspecting it to be a front for Rosa to dodge paying his taxes, in what Rosa bitterly called "the only war Italy ever won".
** The Republic of Minerva was an artificial island built in the early '70s on the remote [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Reefs Minerva Reefs]] in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It never got off the ground because UsefulNotes/{{Tonga}} claimed the reefs as its own, sending a military expedition personally led by the King of Tonga to remove the colonists.
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand Principality of Sealand]] is probably the most successful example, in that the British government has never bothered doing anything to shut the operation down by force, but its population currently consists of a couple of caretakers and a vast number of seabirds. It was founded by a BuccaneerBroadcaster with delusions of grandeur, who was pretty much the only person to take it at all seriously. Various innovative and questionably legal uses for the site have been proposed (at one point it was rumoured that The Pirate Bay were going to build a datacentre there, for example), [[{{Vaporware}} none of which ever end up happening]].
* There have been various proposals for building a city in Antarctica, as there is still unclaimed territory there and the claims that do exist are not widely recognized. The biggest problem here is that a large Antarctic city would probably need a nuclear reactor to stay warm, and that's not technology that most countries want out in the wild like that.
* People have, of course, proposed building city-sized space stations and moon bases to stay away from dreaded government regulation. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfY4djdAW_s This short film]] from 1978 commissioned by the free-market think tank World Research, Inc., about a near-future space colony called Libra created to get away from an overregulated Earth, is one example.
* The history of many "settler" nations is often rooted in a terrestrial example of this.
** In the US, the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Netherland (today's New York), New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland had freedom of religion baked into their founding documents and welcomed persecuted religious minorities. Massachusetts was a [[TheTheocracy theocracy]], but one that was founded by [[NewEnglandPuritan Puritan dissidents]] fleeing persecution in England. Years later, UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution established the US as the world's first (and still oldest) modern liberal democracy, and the idea that the US in general is a bastion of freedom against the authoritarian and centralizing tendencies of the Old World, a place where people from there can [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream reinvent themselves and thrive in a way they never could back home]], still factors heavily into its national mythology.
** The US is not alone in this regard. In South Africa, the Great Trek of the Dutch Boers inland, away from British rule, in the 19th century is central to Afrikaner mythology. Unfortunately, this idea of South Africa as "our home for our people, away from those who would oppress us" wound up influencing [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]. Australia's history, meanwhile, heavily focuses on its legacy as a PenalColony where the UK [[SentencedToDownUnder dumped thousands of people convicted of petty crimes]], as well as the idea of the "fair go", where anybody who arrives gets a fair shot to succeed at their goals.
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* ''Voyage from Yesteryear'' by Creator/JamesPHogan. A probe is sent to Alpha Centauri containing a genetic bank to escape an impending world war. Raised by robots in a PostScarcityEconomy, the colonists form a community where money and authoritarianism are meaningless. This causes problems when the authoritarian Earth governments established during the war decide to send an expedition to bring them back into the fold, leading to severe CultureClash.

* ''Planet of Fear'' by Paul [=McAuley=]. The protagonists are the Soviet [[VenusIsWet naval crew of an ekranoplan on Venus]], so the American libertarians are regarded as pirates, and assumed to be at fault when the personnel of a Soviet outpost go missing.

* ''Creator/LarryNiven Known Universe series has the libertarian Belters versus the statist U.N.-controlled Earth. While Niven prefers the Belters, he recognizes the the government on Earth is struggling with massive overpopulation and is trying to do the best it can for the inhabitants. Some of the works by his fans go over the top and show the Earth as evil and over-controlling and deliberately trying to breed initiative out of humans.

* And lastly, people have, of course, proposed building city-sized space stations and moon bases to stay away from dreaded government regulation. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfY4djdAW_s This short film]] from 1978 commissioned by the free-market think tank World Research, Inc., about a near-future space colony called Libra created to get away from an overregulated Earth, is one example.

* ''Fanfic/LXGTempestRewrite'': After turning the deceased [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Ghroth]] into [[VideoGame/HaloWars Arcadia]], the Star Fems and Anime/CaptainHarlock set up an individualistic society with a minarchist government.

-->It was just another eccentricity of these libertarian Belters, who believed that everyone should be guided by their personal morals instead of a centrally-imposed authority. How they justified such an attitude in an environment where a single error or act of malice could kill not only yourself but everyone else was a mystery.

[[folder: Film ]]

* Earth is implied to be a teeming dystopia in the sci-fi thriller ''Film/{{Saturn 3}}'', compared to the Saturn 3 outpost (presumably Tethys) where Adam and Alex tweak low-gravity crops for peak crop yield. Until the murderous Benson arrives, Adam and Alex have that moon all to themselves.

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Creator/PaulMcAuley's novels ''The Quiet War'' and ''Gardens of the Sun'' pit an eclectic variety of small colonies in the Solar System against the growing aggressions of reactionary and "Gaian", ecologically [[KnightTemplar templaresque]] Earth [[SpaceFillingEmpire superstates]] Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community --whose main objections are to the wild transhumanist genetic engineering freely allowed in the colonies.
** It starts to play more with it as the story progresses, however -- it becomes clear that there are repressive strains amongst the Outer colonies, some of which turn out to be ''very'' important to the story, while other developments make clear that the Earth superstates overall aren't quite so bad as it first seemed -- the perspective was skewed because almost every viewpoint character on Earth was associated with Greater Brazil, who turns out to ''not'' be representative in just how extreme their anti-democracy sentiments are.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' touches on this idea somewhat, in that Earth slowly ([[FromBadToWorse and then more quickly]]) becomes an oppressive place, and also more heavy-handed toward its offworld colonies. Mars probably takes the brunt of this, but it is implied that even [[spoiler: pre-coup]], most colonies are at least taxed very heavily by Earth, and labor strikes are banned (in theory, only when they endanger a military base or operation. In practice, after the Earth-Minbari War, the law authorizing the suppression of strikes has been invoked more often than that). [=EarthGov=]'s intrusions affected the Babylon 5 station adversely as well--until Sheridan [[spoiler:decisively declares the station's independence.]]
* ''{{Series/Firefly}}'' and ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' give us Browncoats. Earth is [[EarthThatWas not present anymore]] in this Verse, so the Core Worlds, ruled by the Anglo-Sino Alliance, fill the repressive role, and the Independent Worlds ("Browncoats") are heroic separatists who want to preserve their freedom. However, while the protagonists are led by former Browncoats, the franchise notably treats the conflict as more OrderVersusChaos than BlackAndWhiteMorality: while the core worlds are police states, they also have a significantly higher standard of living. Whereas on the rim it's easy for gangsters and warlords to rule whole planets and basic supplies such as food and medicine are often hard to come by, but you're at least able to look your oppressor in the eye and put a bullet in his head.

-->'''Miller:''' When I was homicide, there was this guy. Property management specialist working a contract out of Luna. Someone burned half his skin off and dropped him out an airlock. Turned out he was responsible for maintenance on sixty holes up on level thirty. Lousy neighborhood. He’d been cutting corners. Hadn’t replaced the air filters in three months. There was mold growing in three of the units. And you know what we found after that? Not a goddamn thing, because ''we stopped looking''. '''Some people need to die''', and he was one. And the next guy that took the job '''''cleaned the ducting and swapped the filters on schedule'''''.

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* A recurring theme on the Franchise/{{Gundam}} Franchise, with (usually) the Earth or one of the most powerful colonies around wanting absolute control and the rest of the colonies wanting independence.

This trope can cover the capital-L Libertarian ideology, which emphasizes both personal and civil liberties and laissez-faire capitalism, as Creator/RobertAHeinlein's works often did. There have, in fact, been numerous attempts by libertarians to [[StartMyOwn build countries in extreme environments]] very much in the spirit of the trope, many of which are described in the RealLife section below. The general idea, however, can also be more lower-case-l libertarianism, open to broader conceptions of liberty that needn't be, and indeed may challenge, the hyper-capitalist variety. This includes ancoms, mutualists, and other libertarian socialists in space.

This trope can cover the capital-L Libertarian ideology, which emphasizes both personal and civil liberties and laissez-faire capitalism, as Creator/RobertAHeinlein's works often did. There have, in fact, been numerous attempts by libertarians to [[StartMyOwn build countries in extreme environments]] very much in the spirit of the trope, many of which are described in the RealLife section below. The general idea, however, can also be more lower-case-l libertarianism, open to broader conceptions of liberty that needn't be, and indeed may challenge, the hyper-capitalist variety.

This trope can cover the capital-L Libertarian ideology, which emphasizes both personal and civil liberties and laissez-faire capitalism, as Creator/RobertAHeinlein's works often did. There have, in fact, been numerous attempts by libertarians to [[StartMyOwn build countries in extreme environments]] very much in the spirit of the trope, many of which are described in the RealLife section below. The general idea, however, can also be more lower-case-l libertarianism, open to broader conceptions of liberty that needn't be, and indeed may challenge the hyper-capitalist variety.

* The Antarctica version (see RealLife) appears in ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'' with International City. Ironically this is why Antarctica is used to house the MasterComputer that runs the rest of the world, because no nation can be trusted with physical ownership.

* ''Fanfic/LXGTempestRewrite'': After turning the deceased [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Ghroth]] into [[VideoGame/HaloWars Arcadia]], the Star Fems and Anime/CaptainHarlock set up an individualistic society with a minarchist government