In a neighborhood, everyone knows your name. If Joe the Plumber and Fred the Butcher make a bet, everyone has heard it, and the loser has to pay up, or be scorned.
In a bar, the bartender or server holds the bets and pays off the winner, and expects a cut of the pie as a sevice fee/tip.
90 year old woman goes to the local brothel. She tells the madam that she wants to try something new, so she wants to try being a hooker for a night. Madam makes some phone calls, finds some customers who 'd be into it, and tells the woman to come back the next night.
The next day the lady arrives, and soon the first john shows up. They walk upstairs, spend an hour, and come back. The second customer is waiting, and so he and she go upstairs. After she comes back down, the third guy arrives, so it's back upstairs.
At the end of the night the madam asks if she wants to come back?
"Oh, no dear. the sex was fine but those damn stairs will kill me."
https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/underwater-ghost-towns-of-tennessee
Apparently, back in the day the government decided that some places weren't worth saving, and the benefits of building dams and flooding the towns outweighed other considerations.
The movie 'Deliverance' has a plot about something like this happening.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=asteroid+mining
Here's a link to some books on the subject. You're right, most people figure it would be putting our heavy industries in space and bring down what ever products are needed.
With climate change and coastal flooding, it's coming, just not in the form you're thinking of.
Asteroid mining. We've had the tech to get people to the asterodi for decades, just lack the will to do it.
Or he could smile and wave and then shoot him in the back...
A lot of difference between shooting protestors and a nuclear war.
Look at Trump's big military parade. The Army has crack drill teams, expert parachute units, ace helicopter pilots, and dozens of other impressive troops to put on display. No way is the military going to go to war because Donnie is having a tantrum.
Almost as if the other guy didn't have access to many, many more weapons and the legal right to shoot you.
The only reason the Americans won is that they had the French Navy on their side.
The French went broke supporting the Americans.
Also, the Brits were willing to cede to the Americans. The Brits kept getting US cotton and they were going to get it cheaper because once the British empire withdrew the Americans could expand into the Native nations the British had treaties with.
It's not comparable in any way.
Filthy children!
Learn your history!!
https://youtu.be/JN_xXTI5Txo