I seem to recall some form of economic plan that loosely translated as:

you go out into the wilderness of unexplored territory
you searched for natural resources, metals, wood, produce, cattle
you looked for arable land
you actively search for new forms of materials or wildlife

you bring back the bounty of your labors
you get rich
you bring other people back to the area
your group settles, and the ones who work smarter/harder get rich...

Ok, so it seems reasonable enough, and sticks to something vaguely like capitalism/mercantalism, whatever it is. The big problem with doing this on earth with jets, cargo ships, and 7 billion people riding millions of miles of rail, is that eventually, you run out of resources to capitalize,

and you come back to feed upon yourself.

aka globalization in terms of economics. Now everyone makes a profit off profit for the sake of profit while a billion chinese mass produce everything to make 300 million Chinese and 200 million more americans satisfied while 1 billion Indian telemarketers hassle all of the above for skipping out on paying their creditors.

So I began to think about space, how, for at least several thousand generations, it would be impossible for our geometric growth, even in malthusian terms, to make a dent.

In terms of outspace, simply by going into low earth orbit, we could sustain around 26 times the current population.

in terms of natural resources, within our own reachable solar system (pioneers would scoff at our complaints of months and years) rest sextillions of tons of minerals capable of being converted into everything from fertilizer to rocket fuel.

As every physicist has known since the first half of the 20th century, you can build a donut shaped city to simulate Earth gravity on virtually any solid planet in the system.

a lot of the technology to do these things is very archaic, some of it more advanced, but none of it entirely possible.

What do you all think about the potential to restore individual and family freedoms through space colonization, scavenging, etc.?