Those are all current resources. The general currency is "energy" and "materials", and even materials are based on the energy in creating them (I don't think REEs are that rare, but they are hard to process).

There is no research to even suggest that we are going to be able to synthesize one type of matter to another arbitrary type without expending an absurd amount of energy, making it useless to do.

The idea that you could do something like that is even more outlandish than having robots that could automate everything a human could.

> one type of matter to another arbitrary type

But I didn't say this.

Certain materials can be substituted for another, but for high energy costs in making them.