[npunt]

Yeah I'm not buying the argument. Whether or not we may one day do so, we're talking huge timescales here [1] where we'll be effectively in steady state. Not to mention the insanity of having our economic theory based on this hail mary.

Since the use of economic theory is in guiding our long-term decision making, I'd rather that theory be focused on getting it right with what we have, and be pleasantly surprised if we get a bit more growth from a distant space rock, rather than being reliant on the never ending (and growing) series of space rocks.

[1] Few space rocks besides Mars are particularly habitable, each subsequent one we chase after will be less so, and after that we're going outside the solar system where timescales are massive. Our best knowledge of physics/engineering today is that we can colonize these things, but our best knowledge is not that we can reach them at anywhere near FTL.