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SamuelRSmith on 04 July 2011
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Final-Fan said:
  

Well.  You said that we are going to go to space and therefore have incredible amounts of all resources, when in fact we could only have incredible amounts of resources that you can get in space.  That includes metals:  Gold, iron, nickel, etc.  IIRC, our rare earth metal supply issues would be over. 

But it does NOT mean that we will have, for example, more labor resources.  Or more food resources.  Or more fuel resources.  Unless uranium is accessibly plentiful out there, which I don't know.  In that case, more nuclear power would give more grid power, freeing up other fuel sources for the smaller jobs.  And it would also give SOME boost to food production etc., but it wouldn't change the fact that the value of metals would become WILDLY out of proportion (compared to today) with the rest of ... everything.  That would definitely cause countries that depended on mining metals to economically collapse.  As for the industries themselves, well, someone needs to mine in space.

P.S.  I know you didn't say it would be gold, I just picked gold because I thought you DID say it would be a metal and gold is the metal people have usually used so I just said "gold" for convenience.

Well, I've seen articles and videos suggesting that there may be fuel resources.

Labour demand per dollar generated is a constantly falling figure, thanks to technoligical and knowledge advancements. Not only that, but we have a vastly greater labour supply than demand at this time, which is why we have over 2 billion people in poverty. With these two things in mind, I think it's going to be way beyond this century for us to be having a labour supply shortage... if ever.

If it's profitable to mine space (which, eventually, it will be), the markets will produce the firms to do it. As for countries dependant on mining for their economies, I raise two points: 1 - purely specializing the economy on mining is a distater waiting to happen, as you're guaranteed to run out, at some point. 2 - We're talking 30, 40 years, at the least... odds are, very few, if any, countries will be counting for mining taking up a major part of their economy.