If most metal industries collapsed due to space mining, the Earth would see a peculiar time of consumer boom and industrial crisis.

Everything would be cheap, but few would have jobs to pay for it. Those WITH jobs would be taxed outrageously to support those without,

The parallel is with modern China, dumping manufactured goods into the West. Goods are so cheap, we have a materialistic surfiet, yet so many are out of work. We are both poor and rich at the same time.

Imagine the resentment from unemployed mineral and metal workers against the "fat cats" in space. Niven's "Mote" could be a prescient forecast of future human wars between the haves on Earth and the have-nots in space.

Saddam's old-style army crumbled under precision bombing. How would a ground-based USA fare against space weapons and de-orbiting asteroid debris?

there are only two positions in space - Winner Takes All, and everyone else loses.