There is no reason to create a colony in Antarctica that can survive independently from the rest of the Earth.
Sure there is. Antarctica has vast mineral wealth.
The problem is, you can’t get to it, because setting up a town there is basically impossible.
The Russians built a coal mining town (Pyramiden) in Svalbard back in the cold war; It has similar issues to Antarctica, but isn’t as remote. But it collapsed as soon as the cold war ended, because it was never viable economically. The USSR didn’t care, because they valued it for its propaganda as much as for its coal production.
Antarctica is even more remote than Svalbard, and is so economically unviable as a place to establish a mining colony that all the world’s nations agreed not to do so - allegedly to preserve the unique and pristine Antarctic environment, but as a card carrying cynic, I suspect it was because they all recognised that such an agreement did nothing to limit their plans (which were to leave it alone because it was too expensive to exploit), while simultaneously making them all look like noble and caring custodians of the planet (yeah, right).
If Antarctica could have been a viable site for a colony, it would have happened; There’s coal, oil, and untold wealth of minerals of all kinds there.
Again, Antarctica is just like Mars, but on ‘super easy’ mode. Mars has loads of mineral resources, and none of them will ever compete economically with the resources to be found in easy and friendly places on Earth, like the Australian outback, the Congo basin, the New Guinea highlands, none of which most westerners would choose to live in without very high rates of pay indeed.
