Reddit reviews Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

I think automation will lead to radical abundance, openness, and decentralization (checkout /r/Rad_decentralization). Quite the opposite of a socialist state controlling production, but also a greatly reduced role of capital. Libertarian Socialism probably.

Chris Andersen's books convinced me of this, [Makers: The New Industrial Revolution] (http://www.amazon.com/Makers-The-New-Industrial-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0083DJUMA) and [Free: The Future of a Radical Price] (http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson-ebook/dp/B002DYJR4G). We're going to see the sort of market forces that upended the news and music industries when they went digital soon applied to physical goods. As Anderson says, atoms may soon become basically free like bits.

As more and more product designs become digitized in a way where 3D printers and similar technologies can manufacture them, openness becomes almost inevitable because it's nearly impossible to stop piracy (like with music). Near complete automation, combined with open designs, drives costs towards zero.

Anderson talks about how information becoming free on the Internet made a lot of classic economics wrong. Reputation instead of capital largely became valuable as the cost of serving a single customer was too small to care about charging for. Ads turn reputation into capital, but reputation is what really matters. The open source world largely operates off reputation too, and we may compete more for the dopamine kick of up-votes than dollars in the future.

Affordable 3D printing and related technologies are handing the means of production over to the people. The need for centralized capital-heavy or state controlled manufacturing is disappearing.

I'm a big proponent of a Basic Income to get us there. Whether it'd be a fair system in the long run, I'm not sure.