It's funny because on the surface the Freestar Collective is kinda like, heh, space cowboys, neat? But the more time you spend there and the more ambient dialogue you listen to, the more that whole schtick kinda seems less like a gimmick, and more like something that's indicative of a cultural perspective firmly rooted in the past, even to their own detriment.
First of all, other people in the 'verse think the cowboy cosplay is ridiculous. If you carry around a lawgiver, guards in New Atlantis will snicker at you and be like, 'yee haw, cowgirl.' So they KNOW Akilans are cosplaying, they know it's a weird way to dress by the standards of the time.
But here's the thing. People on Akila hero worship Solomon Coe. We understand from Sam's personal quest he's a big deal, and we see the comics and and the statue and the museum and so on. But this isn't just Sam being overly anxious, and that museum isn't just one woman's Super Special Interest. People in Akila, even now, even after all this time think of themselves as frontiers people. They wear the hat and the boots and light candles in front of the statue, but also they're still preserving and building in the early, rugged style of the frontier - lots of natural materials that seem sourced locally. Which on the surface again seems like visual culture, and all right, so what?
Except: They don't pave their streets. They don't expand their city - all right, it's hard to build outwards in ashta country, but why not upwards? There's no public transport or 'modern' amenities like in New Atlantis, even though Sam points out they could use transit. But these people are NOT the poor underdogs. They won the war, as much as the UC likes to pretend it was an even-handed truce. They have the manpower, the technology, the engineering prowess to take on an advanced nation as a rival and win. They're not frontiers people - the game even tells us that moniker belongs to L.I.S.T, who are actually out there on the frontier of space. Akila City is an established power in the verse and yet... they don't pave their streets.
The proprietor of the Stoneroot Inn, talking about a possible vacation mentions that Neon is 'barely' in the Collective. Why? What is it about Neon that doesn't seem 'properly' part of the Collective to her?
People in Cheyenne want to live in an system-sized museum. A time capsule belonging to a time and a person they idolise and mythologise almost beyond reason. They're a people obsessed with a past that might not even be what they think, and so the dress is one thing - no harm done there. But they're reluctant to build upwards, to change the silhouette of their traditional buildings, to the detriment of people in the Stretch who are dying (probably literally) for lack of affordable housing. They're incredibly reluctant to change up the way they administer the city: see Dave Wilson kicking off about Keoni placing sensors (just placing sensors!) in Leader of the Pack, because it threatens the 'traditional' way they deal with the ashta. They don't invest in public transport or modern office blocks to attract business, they don't give their city security modern armour and helmets. And... they don't pave their streets.
