Metal glut: This will be reduced - not eliminated, reduced - by the fact that the Fen are building a society from scratch. Yes, there's something like a thousand tons of metal for each person in space, but the constructed stations (at L5 and elsewhere) take substantially more than a thousand tons of metal each. There's a noticeable fraction of the glut gone right there. Add in the megaprojects like Kandor City, the Grand Canal and the mile-high towers of Helium on Mars, and the city of Coruscant on Mimas, and a lot more of that metal goes right back into - or, at least, onto - the ground.
There's also the question of getting the metal to Earth. HUD and JMC can only carry so much, and people get upset when rocks fall out of the sky onto their back yards (even if those rocks are solid gold)...
StelOil: They aren't going to flood the Earthside markets until somebody cleans up the mess that burning Earth's own supply of petrochemicals caused - Tanith cares about people more than she cares about money. Noah doesn't want to throw thousands of potential tourists out of work (which would happen if making gasoline on Earth became uneconomic).
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
There's also the question of getting the metal to Earth. HUD and JMC can only carry so much, and people get upset when rocks fall out of the sky onto their back yards (even if those rocks are solid gold)...
StelOil: They aren't going to flood the Earthside markets until somebody cleans up the mess that burning Earth's own supply of petrochemicals caused - Tanith cares about people more than she cares about money. Noah doesn't want to throw thousands of potential tourists out of work (which would happen if making gasoline on Earth became uneconomic).
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012