[xenobioticants]

Considering that bringing the resources to Earth would still require landing rights, I'd imagine such a cartel would be easy to break by the world's governments.

[clort]

and considering that if the cartel was blocking you, but you had a few hundred thousand tons of metal in orbit.. you could just send down a bit for free..

[kristianp]

Governments these days compete with each other to pander to corporations. The promise of a few jobs and a few political donations is enough to get a government to do just about anything you want.

[stale2002]

Yes, you are right. And these governments compete with each other.

For every government supporting cartels there will be a dozen trying to break them, because of how much money you can make by breaking a cartel.

Greed still wins, for the betterment of humans.