Great post. But I can't help wonder how governments would stop an organisation that has sufficient technology to go and mine the moon.

A well-capitalised moon mining operation could maintain a base in space and send energy to Earth via laser beam (or whatever similar scientific approach you favour). I'm sure that governments could confiscate earth-bound assets of such enterprises, but they will presumably retaliate by keeping all their assets in space.

I think that exploitation of space (as an activity) will completely screw with our concepts of "nation" and "government". Once a private enterprise can go mine asteroids they're going to have far more capital (i.e. money) than any nation on Earth.