Actually, we are facing some serious scarcity... (Score 1)

Gold, silver, nickel, and palladium are all becoming extremely expensive and otherwise would be used for a lot more cool industrial stuff (slashdotters would appreciate cheaper gold => cheaper faster processors, for one). With India and China increasing their commodity demand as they grow we're going to hit some serious bottlenecks. Also, space mining would be an excuse to start doing cool stuff in space and making it affordable for the average guy to participate (yay free markets...).