As opposed to nature where you are forced to hunt for food under threat of starvation.
Adding insult to injury, because of the pipeline of equipment to the police, we don't even get cool cheap military surplus like during the Cold War.
It's the Center of the Galaxy, like the Center of Disease Control or the Center for African American Studies.
It is a virtual certainty that at some point a meteor large enough to wipe out all multicellular life on the planet will strike the Earth. It is an absolute certainty that the Sun will eventually burn out leaving the planet uninhabitable. Something else might wipe out our species long before either of these things happen, but it's not a bad idea to have another inhabited planet or two as a backups.
Along the same lines as Discworld and Hitchhikers Guide, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The Amazon tv adaptation is excellent as well.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is what I always recommend from Heinlein. I feel like this one in particular has stood up conceptually and thematically over time. AI, space colonialism, predatory capitalism, class revolution. It all feels very relevant.
Someone must have had a concrete squirrel sculpture in their yard that this guy mistook for prey.
Would you really trust podiatrists or proctologists who were in it just for the love of the game?
It just occurred to me. What ever happened to Space Force?
You would at least think an oddball state like Alaska or a one that had taken a beating with Trump's election shenanigans already like Georgia would have the spine to resist.
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
It was surprisingly hard to find a full list.
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All the ones I know of have closed. They really only had overpriced replicas at the end.