Thread: Martian Laws

Mars One is an Dutch organization whose goal is to establish a human settlement in 2023 on Mars through the integration of existing, readily available technologies from industry leaders world-wide. In other words, a one-way mission to the red planet.

Although I encourage people to surpass the human boundaries in space, I am concerned about the legal implications of this mission.
If we put men and women on Mars, which laws do they have to obey and in case they violate them, how should they be punished?
Are legal proceedings necessary and/or should they build 'prisons' in order to isolate the criminals?

Do the forum members have any solutions for these questions?


Source:
About Mars One - Mars One

I would suggest that any colony on Mars come up with their own laws, tailored to fit their environment and their society.

That is a very Good question!

First I would say, that it is up to them to decide what laws, political system and economic system they wish to use. Ideally in my opinion, it should be a system people agree to in advance before risking it all, and also in my opinion they should start fresh with a collaborative direct democracy, where every knowledge/education, method/design, non-nominative data, and decision is transparent and accessible.

Many ideas from the Resource Based Economy concept that The Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement advocate are well worth examining to see if some of these would be beneficial, and test various organization prototypes on Earth to see what works, what doesnt and what needs to be changed/adjusted/adapted.

Among the approaches is the understanding of root causes of problems and finding how the environment can be changed to avoid the problem or meet the need that eventually can cause the problem. Instead on relying on a law, use design as much as possible to prevent the problem (ex: instead of a law that says dont fall in the elevator shaft, build a door that is closed until the elevator is there)

Originally Posted by icewendigo

First I would say, that it is up to them to decide what laws, political system and economic system they wish to use. Ideally in my opinion, it should be a system people agree to in advance before risking it all, and also in my opinion they should start fresh with a collaborative direct democracy, where every knowledge/education, method/design, non-nominative data, and decision is transparent and accessible.

A collaborative democracy is indeed a political system that I can agree with. Since the first colonies on Mars are going to be very small, collaboration will be crucial and the opinion of one member must be as equal as the opinions of other members, in order to reach a decision by majority that will be beneficial for the group.

Furthermore, deciding in advance which rules they want to follow, seems to be a social contract system. This is, in my opinion, necessary.
After all, when these explorers are on Mars, they are not bound to the laws of their country because their nationality becomes irrelevant.

"in order to reach a decision by majority that will be beneficial for the group."

I would have
1) Proxy voting, where you can vote directly or allocate your vote to a representative(perhaps on a field of expertise category basis) for convenience/practical reasons that can be revoked or changed at any time in real time;

2) Volunteer Mediators, that is a pool of volunteers that can act as Jury/Oversight Citizen/Adviser (also with potential field of interest categories) that can schedule themselves to be on stand-by, so that a Jury/panel of RANDOMLY selected Volunteers can be called at any time, to oversee a situation that is a problem. Although all tutorials and training is free, these Citizen Volunteers would have basic mediation/problem solving training, and could escalate an issue to a Direct democracy vote. This would be a formal mechanism that would be a formal compliment/alternative to informal problem resolution through networking and contacting experts and arriving at a solution;

3) Qualify decisions as being Routine, Technical or Preference issue.
a) Where Routine are issues that are common/not-unusual and for which there is a recorded method procedure or guidelines that can be applied. In any case, as always, the input information is transparent, the method/guideline used is identified and transparent, and the result is transparent, and subject to a Jury Oversight(the input could be erroneous or incomplete, the method can be inappropriate or incomplete, the result can be contrary to the appropriate method/guideline) and to a request for Method adjustments or ultimately to a Direct democracy for exceptional cases.
b) Where Technical Issues are dealt with by expert(that have broader perspective), who base their decision on transparent input, transparent and freely accessible education/expertise/training, testing or prototyping in some cases and the scientific method, and results are also transparent so that the process/conclusion can be subject to change or improvements. Again this is a auto-pilot procedure that can be put into manual by anyone with Oversight and escalation to D Democracy for exceptional situation were the experts are off the rails such as could be the case with moral/ethical concerns (Tuskegee syphilis experiment).
c) Where Preference issues are dealt by allowing as much variety/diversity/customization/personalize-ation as is practical, taking into account the radius/interaction scope along with democratic (preference of the majority of people affected or in the community needs to be addressed when differentiation/customization is not practical);

4- Using a Priority Scale, Security Code, Code of Conduct, Values(constitution/rights) as guidelines, where Priority Scale starts with basics like Air Pressure, Oxygen, Water, Food, Shelter, Power, Communication, Logistics/Transport, Medical Care, Production, Maintenance, ... ending with Entertainment, etc, where "Generally speaking" a lower category is not a priority when a higher level is disrupted/offline (ex: Maintenance of hydroponics whose absence could disrupt vital food, is a priority over entertainment, a transport being offline is a priority over regular hydroponics maintenance, and an air leak/depresurizeation is an emergency that in most situations would have priority over getting the transport tube back online. Though in most cases, all these different priorities could be dealt with simultaneously by various people in parallel.)

So unlike on earth at large, you should not have people dying because they have no food, while other people dont give a crap and society acts as if there was no problem, because life support and living would take a priority over other issues, and once everyone can eat(which is mostly the case) then you step up the priority of other issues up to entertainment.

Also Note, that Priority does NOT mean, that you cant multitask, if there's a pin sized air leak in corridor 7, you cant have 1000 people trying to fix it, but ideally you should have automated sensors and in a worst case scenario where automated alarm doesnt go off the first person to notice it should call it in, with the nearest persons with Basic emergency breach training getting an alarm so they might make a basic Intervention while the most experience/expert Breach Engineers are on their way, same thing for a medical emergency, everyone should get Basic First Aid training, and the second there a medical emergency (if no automated signal is cast) the first person has basic training, the closest person with Advanced training gets an emergency call along with the expert paramedic, and the Surgeon. Right now, if you have an emergency on one end of a shopping mall and a surgeon is the other side of the mall, you could be surrounded by people that did not have first aid training and wait for an ambulance for minutes while the person at the other end who would gladly help save your life is waiting for his wife to pick and chose shoes because he doesnt know [note that imo shopping malls and money is obsolete, specially in a colony, but its just a common cultural reference]).

EARTHLINGS, I MAKE THE RULES AROUND HERE AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!