Hacker News Reader

Comment by amalcon | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that rare earth metals aren't all that rare. They're just named that because they're similar in certain ways to the "common earth metals". There are many known deposits, that just aren't profitable. Most locations simply can't compete with the infamous cheap Chinese labor.

If China stops its exports, there will be a little bit of a shock period and a modest price increase thereafter, not the end of the world.

View on HN

Agreed. Every country has loads of dirt and rock. Just no one wants to dig it up for slave wages. Once the price is right, we'll be happy to do the work.

This is all true. But here's a fun hypothetical. At what costs does mining in space become profitable? How expensive would a metal have to be per ounce?

This is the first thing that lept to my mind, too. There's a lot of that sort of thing in space. Private industry is currently stuck trying to emulate NASA, but when it will really take off is when it finds something it can do better. Space mining is a very viable candidate on the decade time scale.

Need to do the nanotube thang first, though. We need materials with enough tensile strength to withstand the stress of a space elevator. Then you'll see space mining and solar collection.

"slave wages" is not exactly correct. If a chinese worker from the south of china goes to north china to work for a couple years making shower curtains, they return home and pay cash for a house.

What you consider slave wages is a lot of money to them. If you went there and did the work, you'd consider it slave wages, but they consider it very good money.

Their cost of living is significantly less in most of China than the Western costs of living. However Beijing is getting fairly pricey rents now, approximately $400 per month and it isn't uncommon to see them in the 1000's. I'd hardly say the chinese workers are paid slave wages when apartments near me are listed at $600.

This is a good point. Even if China succeeds in this restriction, the rise in prices outside China will cause all sorts of effects undoing it; new deposits will be located, old deposits exploited, and you can be sure that if the price difference gets too large, there will be lots of smuggling of the raw metals out - having built a large lawless economy, officials will find it difficult to suppress exportation of small volumes of extremely valuable metal. Consider the cited example of ore at 21 million USD a ton. How many cargo containers is that? 1? 2? How much of a % increase would it take to make it worth smuggling? Not much...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com