"I guess you support a totally laissez-faire economic policy, something like we had until about the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. Well, I disagree. I hear it was a pretty ugly time to be alive, especially if you worked for a living. The twentieth century benefited greatly from anti-trust legislation introduced by T. Roosevelt, a Republican, by the way."
Well, it resulted increasing the worth of Standard Oil- so of course it had some benefit. Though when corporate raiders do this instead govt, some might suppose that there something wrong with it. If Anti-trust was a one shot deal, then it's damage would been lessen, but when you consider all the ramification leading from this- I don't know if it had any positive value. As for supporting laissez-faire. It depends. But in general terms I think business people have more knowledge about business [and in particular their business] than politican do. I can't imagine why anyone would think any different.

"As for our differences about government regulation, all I know is that when you discuss these issues the conservative position always seems to be "Let us do anything we want and everything will be OK. Just trust us." Please don't take this personally, but I don't."

Ok, you don't trust them, but how does having mountains of regulations improve the situation. Are politicans the people you trust? Do you trust the media? [which is a business.]
If you are ignorant about something, you two choices: learn more about it, or "just trust us".
As it is you have politicans who live in a bubble, passing laws telling people who know far more about something how they are suppose to do something.

"If your theories are correct, then capital should be becoming available to put these off-world enterprises into effect. That is the only proof that counts in business. That, and the profit the capital is chasing. Time will settle that argument for us."

As I said their laws and rules and potential laws and rules which prevent this from happening. For example get the best lawyer in America, now have him tell your property rights in regard to the Moon or any other body in space. That is just one example. This example is not a huge hurdle, but it is one hurdle

"I am not an enemy of space exploration, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid growing up in the '50s, but except for a few very expensive and disappointing missions, very few people have actually gone into space during my lifetime. I had hoped there would be a permanent lunar colony and frequent missions to Mars by now, and that the exploration of the asteroid belt and the outer planets would be getting started. I don't think this hasn't happened because of interference by the federal government. I just think that except for ComSats, there just isn't anything out there worth going after, right now. I'm sure someday, there will be. I hope I'm still alive to see it."

Well, as said lunar dirt is worth something:
"What Are They Worth?

Samples (slabs, chips, crumbs) of the lunar meteorites have sold on the Internet for between about $1,000 and $40,000 per gram, depending upon rarity and demand. By comparison, the price of gold is about $11 per gram."
http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/moon_meteorites.html

In my opinion the most valuable thing that could possibly be on the Moon is hydrogen- in abundance. Next would be lakes of Methane. And would be next lakes of water. And next lakes of oxygen. We don't have lakes of H2, CH3, H2O, or O2 on the Moon, so it's not the best that could possibly hoped for. But, the Moon does have "zillions" of tons of Oxygen in the form of oxides [40% of mass of Moon is Oxygen]. The Moon does have billions of tons of Hydrogen in the top meter of regolith- diffused throughout entire surface [arguably minable in large scale mining operations]. And the Moon has a higher concentration of H2 at lunar poles, which is thought to be in the form of water or possible some other compound which has Hydrogen in it.

At the lunar poles there *could* be 10 billion tons of water. If of that one billion of tons water could be mined and if the average price of that water was $10 per lb [$75 per gallon] it's gross worth would be 20 trillion dollars.