My take on why mars: there is no countries and no established laws maintained by existing societal structures. There is just no any other power other than the nature itself. Any colony on earth is doomed to be captured by a larger power sooner or later. I think in the eyes on ppl who are dreaming about Mars, nature is a weaker foe than other man.
I think as soon as people are moving to Mars, you'd at a minimum at least need some kind of commonly agreed-to standard around land ownership. I.e. maybe each new settlement implicitly owns all the land in a twenty mile radius. If you want to settle closer than that to an existing settlement, that's fine as long you can work out an agreement with the original colony.
That is true, but for several generations the first (if not the only) law will be survival of the colony, hence extreme meritocracy. That is very appealing for very many ppl.
