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[...] many others were worried about the absolute collapse in commodity prices that would have occurred if it were suddenly easy to get all the iron and nickel
by danbruc 10y ago
[...] many others were worried about the absolute collapse in commodity prices that would have occurred if it were suddenly easy to get all the iron and nickel we’d need for centuries.
Worried? Because of falling prices? Looks like someone didn't pay attention during economics 101 or is afraid of going out of business.
- danharaj 10y agoFunny how econ 101 doesn't predict the systemic damage that a precipitous price drop can inflict on an economy.
- danbruc 10y agoWhat kind of systemic damage could asteroid mining cause?
- M_Grey 10y agoWell lets see... are there any economies that depend on mining? It seems like it would cause quite a stir.
- danbruc 10y agoWhat does dependent mean? There are 8 countries with more than 10 % of their GDP from mineral resources. They are in order of decreasing share Togo, Suriname, Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mongolia, Chile, and Zambia. Togo has the largest dependency with 16.1 %. Chile is by far the largest economy with a GDP of 240 billion Dollar followed by Congo, Zambia, and Mongolia with 35, 21, and 11 billion Dollar. So depending on the exact composition, some countries might experience some pain. But space mining would not arrive over night, missions have to be planed, infrastructure must be build, and long distances have to be traveled. So there would almost certainly be some time to get prepared for the arrival of cheap cheap metals from space.
- M_Grey 10y agoThe countries you've listed... do they strike you as likely to "get prepared"? Even if they did, what could they do?
- danbruc 10y agoShift the economy towards other sectors? That happens all the time. A prime example are oil states currently trying to lower their dependence on oil. What would be the alternative? Not innovate? No, let's not invest in renewable energy, that will hurt coal, oil, and gas producing countries, let's just keep burning fossile fuels? That's just the way it is, the world changes constantly, adapt or fall behind.
- M_Grey 10y agoI don't think some of those places have "other sectors" that can be shifted to. I'm not arguing for burning fossil fuels, but shrugging and telling people already past the edge of desperation to "adapt" is cruel and unreasonable.
- danbruc 10y agoThe highest dependency on mineral resources is 16.1 % and it seems unlikely that the entire sector would get killed, i.e. if the asteroid contains mostly iron and nickel, then only those parts would be affected. Without running the actual numbers it's hard to tell if some countries would get hit unreasonably hard. But even if, we could still opt to support them. We could have a tax on space mining operations and spend the proceeds on support for affected countries. So this should at best be a question of how, not if. By the way, I don't think space mining will be of any practical relevance in the foreseeable future. I would also much prefer if we would learn to operate economically with the resources we have instead of just reaching for more resources. So I have no real skin in the argument, I just found this position against space mining unjustified.
- M_Grey 10y ago
- nroets 10y agoWe see precipitous price drops all around us. Like the price of data storage (hard disk), bandwidth or transistors. Local price drops are even more common, for example the price of coal at the gate of some mines. There are some houses in Italy and Detroit with a price tag of zero.
- runeks 10y agoThere's a huge difference between providing a stable source of iron from a mine, and dumping on the market, all at once, what would take ten years to mine. If you were certain you'd get it back to earth, you could offset this effect by slowly selling futures contracts. But if you then fail to bring back the iron you'd just cause he opposite problem: a sudden increase in scarcity (when you default on your futures contracts), rather than a sudden increase in abundance. I believe the solution is to partner with an insurance company, but I'm not sure anyone is large enough to cover the amounts we're talking about here. The amount you could bring back safely would probably mostly be limited by the insurance premium you can afford to pay.