should we colonize the moon before mars?

This article explains why colonizing the moon before colonizing Mars would make the entire process more efficient. It also argues that colonization of these two locations would benefit human society by giving humans a completely new location that could be run by different laws and with a different kind of government. I think this is interesting because I do not believe that a change in location is going to necessarily change all of the problems we have within our society. A colony on the moon would suffer from the same political problems that we have here on earth.