A friend and fellow BSFS Writer’s Circle partner, Chris Rose, recently tweeted the following regarding the state of capitalism:
This is the first article I’ve read in a while that really turned me around about something. Well worth your time to read and to ruminate on:https://t.co/Gn0jivtmWU
— Christopher Mark Rose (@CChrisrose) February 21, 2018
His subsequent post referring to the full text of RFK’s speech, by the way, is brilliant.
An interesting read, but it’s not a new idea. Peter Drucker wrote about the end of capitalism back in the 90’s, and of course, Das Kaptal came out in 1867.
More recently, there’s been a lot talk of the death of capitalism: for example,
http://theconversation.com/basic-income-after-automation-thats-not-how-capitalism-works-65023
And also:
Thinking about this led me to post the following reply:
‘Not just capitalism, I think. The possibility of true abundance undermines the valuation of ‘worth’, which presupposes a great deal. Marx goes down in flames, too. And 3D printers (gen one replicators) haven’t even begun to reach their potential yet.’
And Chris replied back:
‘But there’s a long way from here to post-scarcity for everyone. 3D printing is, in Marx’s phrasing, a means of production. What makes you think everyone will have access, let alone equal access?’
I posted an answer, explaining why 3D printing is different, but it was immediately obvious that 140 characters didn’t do the discussion justice. So I’ll turn my thoughts into this long blog post instead. They say a good blog post should be about 500 words, no more; but hey.
Before getting to 3D printers, let me talk about Marx, as I understand him. Marx’s idea is that human labor is the source of economic value; nasty evil capitalists pay labor less than it’s worth and thus achieve their own prosperity from the worker’s suffering by reason of greed. Problem is, Marx’s ideas of how to cure capitalism’s problems are at least as equally flawed. The problem as I see it- and I do see capitalism as flawed- is the definition of ‘economic value’. Note that this is different than the ‘social value’ Chris’s article mentions. Marx’s problem is that to him labor, not 3D printers, is a means of production. Suppose that’s not true?
A more and more nuanced view of capitalism’s downfall is Jeremy Rifkin’s Zero Marginal Cost idea:
Which leads to this question: if, in a capitalist economy, production equals consumption, isn’t marginal utility bound to the marginal cost of production? If one is worthless, isn’t the other?
There’s a related problem that suggests itself. Capitalism is joined at the hip to the government through taxation. Consider a government without taxation, if you can. Before you say ‘income tax’, recall that real income derives from employment. Taxation is, as Heinlein said, the ruin and downfall of governments; it leads to folly like taxing government workers- the folly we’ll probably repeat by taxing GBI at some point. Guaranteed basic income will be paid from real taxes, or it will just be inflation. It’s why GBI probably won’t work.
Anyway, on to 3D printers.
My answer to Christs post was twofold. First, 3D printing is an exponential technology. Second, designs are downloads, thus digital.
An exponential technology is any technology that expands at an exponential rate. Moore’s Law is the now-classic example. Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is another such technology. The reason’s simple: 3D printers can print 3D printers; see the Reprap project. So, take your first 3D printer and print another one. Now you have two. Have them each print another. Now you have four. Then eight, sixteen… until you’re hip deep in 3D printers. Exponential technologies seem to start slow- but appearances can be deceiving. Other such technologies are all around us, as Ray Kurzweil points out: AI, robotics, synthetic biology, to name a few.
The second aspect of 3D printers is that they, or the ‘access to them’ Chris talks about, are an amalgam of several parts, 3D printers are not just the devices themselves, but also the plans for the thing you wish to make, whatever it is. A 3D printed object can be can be anything from a cake icing to concrete, from a pancreas to a plastic Lego to a pistol. Downloading designs from libraries of such designs- and there are now many such libraries- means that 3D printing is another technology being digitized. We know what happens to costs when that happens.
What’s left is material costs, and that will remain. But many materials are essentially free or at least very cheap today. It’s why we’re buried in trash. PLA is made from corn starch; ABS, while more costly to make, is recyclable; just melt and re-extrude it. So are most metals- just separate and powder them. Recycling today means ‘take it to a recycling center and don’t worry about it, and particularly ignore the fact that it’s often just buried.’ If the economy goes to hell, that’s likely to change.
I agree with Chris that its’ a long road to post-scarcity, but the road has been mapped. And there are many intermediate steps to a printed chicken in every printed pot:
- The neighbor who’s a hobbyist maker, who branches out into cottage industrialist. You can see these everywhere today, particularly at cons.
- The mail order maker who will print your gizmo and ship it to you. Also everywhere today.
- William Gibson, in The Peripheral, has your friendly neighborhood 3D printer located down at the corner 7-11.
There are of course many roadblocks, and, as usual, most of them involve money. There’s a real effort to commercialize consumer 3D printers; consider MakerBot. But in my opinion, the economics are themselves proof of the pace at which this technology grows. The prices keep falling, and the printer companies struggle to make a profit.
A bigger issue is that today, consumer 3D printing is mostly dumbed down to plastic, mostly PLA and ABS. This is a huge drawback. Plastic’s of limited value. The biggest recent 3D printing advances are in fact in metal printing, and particularly, Desktop Metal’s new system. Order of magnitude cost reductions and speed improvements, and huge versatility. But because of power restrictions, not suitable for home use. This will get fixed, though. However well-intended, safety restrictions are just that- imposed limits. Home 3D printers that can print with sub-millimeter accuracy a wide range of metals and alloys will change everything. Ask any shop owner.
Other exponential technologies will lead to abundance also, especially AI and robotics. I don’t see that reaching to home use directly any too soon- your farmbot or shopbot aren’t there yet. Well, there are ShopBots… But AI will certainly reach into the home in a big way, and Rosie and Andrew Martin are coming. Meanwhile, AI will find its way into your 3D printer and your ShopBot.
For now and the immediate future, this stuff is the domain of the handyman. The clumsy need not apply. But then again, that’s always been true, hasn’t it?