Economic Impact of Space Based Resources/Automation

[The Architect]

Do we see the price of some materials crash through the floor? Or not so much?

My guesstimate is you take how much of the materials you can get in one go to a processing facility (probably in Earth orbit at first, and then progressively anywhere in solsys) and then you divide that by how much it cost to bring it to where it can be transformed into something else. Add a certain percentage of profits if capitalism survives this long and that's it.

Of course, that begs the question of how much it would cost and how much you can bring back. But I think I've seen articles. Anyway there's always this as a starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Economics

what happens if we go into space and find so much that the price crashes to a penny per ounce?

Golden toilet seats will be the new hype

But what happens if/when automation gets so cheap that it costs only a fraction of current prices for any and all labor costs? Do the owners/shareholders just ignore this and continue charging increased prices for things? Or does it reach the point where they are forced to cut prices because they can't justify charging X dollars per hour if the robot is actually only costing Y pennies per day to work?

I've heard Scottish economist Mark Blyth say that automation could lead to the end of capitalism if there is no UBI because robots don't spend money, so who is going to buy the products if their job has been replaced by a robot and they are now unemployed? I think a half-assed UBI like in The Expanse and work as a privilege is more likely at this point.

Can automation become so cheap that it starts forcing companies to push their revenue projections downward?

Yes, especially if people have little or no money to consume what they produce. What I could imagine is the buying of competition and giant mergers so that there would be just a few manufacturers left (I know there are laws against this in certain countries, but are they actually followed?). So each manufacturer would make more money than ever, but they would be the only ones. Whether they will control the government or be controlled by government is anyone's guess, but if I extrapolate the current trends, it will likely be the former.

Does automation eventually become so cheap and common that the entire concept of paying for labor starts to seem ridiculous?

I think there is a possibility of that, but at this point it seems unlikely. Making getting paid for labor a privilege seems more likely at this point.