Asked in good faith...
And if the U.S. was allowed to claim the moon in the 1960's, and sell the right to develop parts of its to mining firms as in the America west, there would be lunar mining today.
Do you offer this in a somewhat rhetorical manner, or literally?
The reason I ask is, would there really be a profit to be made from lunar mining (or mining of any extraterrestrial object)? Would the materials be used in off-world construction, or somehow brought to the surface of the earth?
If the latter, then I also have to ask:
1. Wouldn't it be prohibitively expensive?
2. Are we really that short of raw materials?