Who can throw rocks better, a tribe with a giant pile of boulders at the bottom of a valley, or a single man with a pile of fist-sized stones at the top of a mountain?
Maybe the one with more rocks to convert into energy via rock fusion?
No, no, you forget about the gravity well. Read up on your Heinlein!
Or the Expanse series. Although there the Moon is firmly in Earth's political control, while the rock-throwers are further out in the asteroid belt.