NASA headed towards giant golden asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire

submitted by EthnocratArcheofuturist from self.debatealtright

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Tarrock 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's the big thing about the sci-fi genre. Once you leave your planet, there's entire asteroids made out of a solid metal, meaning that once you know how to asteroid mine, that value of a resource is only worth as much as the time and effort to mine it. In a space centric economy, energy is what is valuable since it is always needed and is depleted upon use.

[–]Ponderer 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was recently reading about a sci-fi game that suggested space-based societies would use cryptocurrency.

At first I thought it was just pandering to its audience, but in retrospect it makes sense. If every physical resource is common, then mathematical scarcity might be the only thing rare enough to trade.

This also makes me think that people who spent thousands stocking up on precious metals will be screwed in a few decades if asteroid mining becomes commonplace.