That doesn’t really scale. Minerals are where they are in the earth’s crust, and at some point we need to go to DR Congo if we want enough cobalt to go around. Especially if we want stuff like electric cars.

And that’s just one example of one mineral. There is the notion of the “resource curse” —countries rich in natural resources often stay poor because why develop a modern economy when you can just become a warlord and force children to mine diamonds or cobalt for you? The flip side of this is the part where we in the developed world don’t like to think too much about where these basic resources come from.