I meant to ask this in the Eyes of Amber entry

[james_davis_nicoll]

Why is so much SF concerned with resource extraction?

Comments

[bricklovinfreak.livejournal.com]

...which is kind of the point. If it's abundant, why are we going there to do that work, when we could be doing it here, and saving ourselves the shipping costs?

One answer I haven't seen a lot of is that your friendly local labor may be organized and have legitimate health concerns that tank-grown slave workers will cheerfully ignore.

If the margins are such that only really fantastically awful worker abuse makes this hypothetical resource extraction profitable (unlikely), then maybe, but it's going to look a lot more like the Belgian Congo than Teh Westz0rz(tm).

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Abundant doesn't mean easily extractable. Take iron and aluminum for just two examples.