Mars colonies are mainly a terrible idea because companies like SpaceX ruin our living space on earth to get ahead. Just look around their launch sites that have transformed once vibrant ecosystems into a post apocalyptic hellscape. It‘s simply unsustainable to ruin a livable planet in order to colonize a dead rock. The whole Mars mission is a scam from that perspective alone. I think even entertaining the idea of a Mars colony and debating about it‘s independence from Earth is missing the point.