Aeronaut wrote: “Greed is good” (Micheal Douglas in Wall Street). Throw in a few space elevators and the resulting space-based economy will quickly dwarf the Earth’s. Now that’s a Carrot!

Someone calculated that moving a 1km-diameter rocky/nickle-iron asteroid into near-Earth orbit would make easily accessible the equivalent of all the precious metals mined in the history of mankind, plus a significant fraction of the base metals. The value would work out to about $1 Million per capita for the planet. Which is about $6.5 quadrillion. That even makes Obugabe’s deficits look small!