Mining the moon makes no sense to me, although governments have eco-political needs to fund enormous projects which produce impressive images showing how hard it is to do anything (that wasn’t designed to be the most elegant solution to the publicly stated problem).
As for mining asteroids, I’d go to them rather than try to figure out the laws of unintended circumstances regarding moving new and significant masses into earth orbit. Besides, that kind of mobility will open up the space travel and vacation industries. Been waiting for that all my life.
