[x]

Science fiction movies, as opposed to novels, must explain their futuristic worlds ASAP. In this context, socialism is very efficient: It takes hardly any time to simply assume that all decisions, political and economic, are in the hands of a unified government.

I suppose so.

A lot of SF fans are libertarians and welcome the idea of a world without government.

But if you're going for that kind of frontier purity and solitude you probably don't have a McDonald's or a Walmart in every space station.

Space is a much sparser, emptier environment. It's where you go when you want to get away from everything earthbound: commercialism, overpopulation, and overdevelopment as well as from red-tape and bureaucracy.

So what begins as a world without government ends up as a militarized, regulated world where trade takes a back seat to provision by centralized command.

What the article says -- that if you like shoot 'em ups, you'll put up with an anti-government message -- applies with a vengeance: if you want the loneliness and cleanliness of space you put up with the high command keeping the rest of humanity at a distance.

[GeronL]

But if you're going for that kind of frontier purity and solitude you probably don't have a McDonald's or a Walmart in every space station

Why not?

Nobody is talking about complete anarchy. There will be businesses and people doing busines. As a matter of fact it might be like the British East India Company where millions of people buy stock to fund colonizations of worlds.