Real Value

BDolge:

I like your clarification on the difference between the guitarmaker and the service person. There is one caveat though, that, the guitarmaker's quality is to a large extent determined by consumers. I've worked as a carpenter in the past, and was often frustrated by customers who favored flashy superficiality over underlying quality.

One of the joys of working with some very high-end clients was their willingness to pay for things like dovetailed joints in places no one would ever see them. I read a similar comment from the head of Bottega Venetta, which makes things like $25,000 purses which obviously sell to a very specialized segment of people. He said that the high-end couture houses could not differentiate based on things like design, because any new design would be copied by factories in China and on retail shelves within a couple months. When you pay $25,000 for a handbag, you want it to be the only one like it. So, he said, they focus on things like fabrics that require special manufacturing techniques, and methods of fabrication, shaping, sewing, that take enormous amounts of specialized craft labor to do, because these cannot be copied inexpensively.

You say, "Aside from deliberate ostentation there is a limit to how many material goods one can consume."

True, but "deliberate ostentation" is almost entirely subjective. Many amateur photographers buy camera equipment better than that used by many professionals. The classic case of course is the $5000 Rolex that tells time the same as the $25 Timex. I buy taps that cost $10 even though the $3 ones get the job done, because the expensive US-made ones are much nicer to use. There's really no economic justification other than my personal enjoyment. The $25k purse is nothing but a linear scaling of the idea. And there are purses at every price point--tens of dollars, low hundreds, high hundreds, low thousands, and so on.

So, the idea that spending on services goes up because it's hard to spend money on goods is, IMHO, not entirely defensible. My father and his wife spend a few hundred dollars a month on a maid, and drive around in two old cars. What they spend on the maid could pay for a nicer car, but they get more value from the maid. If they had a lot more money they might buy a nicer car but I'd bet that they'd go for a new Chevy rather than a Benz and hire a decorator/gardener/etc.

Besides all that, "deliberate ostentation" is hardly unpopular

As the owner of a Macintosh computer I would never underestimate the importance of attention to detail or the prevalence of deliberate ostentation.

However the original point was that "building a jetstream" is qualitatively different from providing personal service (being a stewardess) and therefor personal service jobs were unlikely to directly replace productive jobs.

My premise regards deliberate ostentation is that people choose venues for ostentation, someone with a private jet is unlikely to have an Imelda Marcos shoe closet. Some people collect cars, very few collect yachts. Indeed, extreme devotion to ostentation is considered pitiful or humorous. Assuming your parents won the lottery they could get 2 new cars and 2 maids. The next month they would spend the same amount on the maids, but it is unlikely they would buy 2 more cars. Services are perishable by nature which explains why they become more prevalent as income rises, poor people buy durable goods (washing machines) because they are in the long run a better deal, rich people can afford to buy things that won't last (trips to the dry cleaner). Again I was questioning whether personal service would become more prevalent as productive labor is displaced by personal fabrication.

I think there will be limited space. Especially if we use solar to create energy. That means space is needed for homes and energy, two things everyone needs.

Perhaps the sewer scrubbers will get the most money and buy the largest amounts of land. And they will hire the most services.

Even if we go into space, it won't relieve the pressure of population growth. An exodus to another star won't affect the solar population very much, unless you can convince large percentages of the entire population to endure a decade long journey to a remote world. Yeah, colonization is possible, but the colonization of the new world didn't really affect the population growth of the old world much.

Space is a luxury that becomes more scarce with time.

hello mccoyn:

One of the few really ironclad laws of demography is that fertility decreases as wealth increases. Across time, across cultures, always. The worlds well-to-do (both as families and as nations) tend to reproduce at or below the replacement rate. So one would expect population to be self limiting in a post scarcity world.

"Space is a luxury that becomes more scarce with time."
Only if nobody dies. In fact population density tends to decrease with wealth, Nairobi is more crowded than New York.

I also think that solar power probably requires less dedicated space than conventional power generation when you include things like coal mines and oil fields into the equation. Solar cells on a rooftop require essentially no space. Solar can also be deployed in areas such as deserts and oceans which are unsuitable for human habitation.

I agree that space colonies are unlikely to effect population unless we can get them to become self replicating, in which case all bets are off.

There is a lot of space in space, even around our sun. We might try building a Dyson sphere to exploit it, which is really just a bunch of space colonies surrounding a star.

Speaking of space and self replication, it would take about 100 million years for a self-replicating device to consume much of the matter in the galaxy. This is with the ability to move to star to star at C and taking one year to get to production capacity.(this is of course, if we are the only civilization in this galaxy) This is a relatively short time frame in universal terms.

There's potentially lots of space on Earth, too. If you've not already done so, I think you should read Diamond Age, and see what product Imperial Tectonics makes. There are all sorts of thing you can do with clever replicating technology, after all...

BDolge: "However the original point was that "building a jetstream" is qualitatively different from providing personal service (being a stewardess) and therefor personal service jobs were unlikely to directly replace productive jobs."

But haven't they? Manufacturing as a % of GDP in the US has been more or less flat for 20 years. However, the percentage of jobs in mfg. has gone down steadily due to technological advancement. Meanwhile, "services" as a category has grown significantly, as have the number of service jobs.

If this has already happened on the basis of relatively linear refinements to conventional manufacturing techniques, I can only imagine what highly-capable personal fabrication approaches, let alone true molecular replication systems, might do.

The other thing, though I don't think this is exactly what you mean, is that service jobs are "productive" if we measure utility to the consumer rather than metric tons of widgets shipped or some other intermediate measure. I think often that the discussion is motivated in large part by personal preferences, i.e., I would much rather work as a machinist than a private secretary, or on a factory assembly line than as a nursing home attendant, even if the pay were slightly lower.

Well the NUMBER of service jobs have increased, but service jobs are often part time and underpaid so people often hold more than one and the average living standard of a service worker is lower. Similarly, manufacturing EMPLOYMENT has been flagging, but manufacturing PRODUCTIVITY has soared.

If you take consumer preference (utility) as the determinant of value you find that Hummers are better than Piruses and guns are better than dialysis machines. The idea that a thing is always and only worth what someone will pay for it is the central delusion of capitalism. Is a personal trainer worth more than a school teacher? Markets undervalue societal goods and overvalue novelty. Markets tend to ignore inputs and outputs that effect "commons" such as air, water, educated populous, rule of law, trustworthy markets etc. Markets are a useful part of society but making society into a market is a recipe for disaster.

As you say, "I can only imagine" which is what we are doing, with perhaps some attempt at analytical rigor.
I imagine that personal fabrication technology will decrease the amount of time/energy needed to support oneself in decent style. I imagine that most people will respond to this by working less and developing hobbies or choosing more rewarding rather than renumerative jobs, rather than by simply moving down the employment food chain. I imagine that this technology will be environmentally more benign than the current mass production methods and will lead to a flattening of the wealth curve on both a local and a global scale. I imagine that this will make consumption less compulsive and advertising less useful than it is presently in the developed world. That's what I imagine.

Service job or machinist?
When the job becomes to manufacture a unique item, that will be proudly displayed for maybe a week before the owner gets bored and has another made, was it manufacturing or service?
Is a web page a manufactured item? Or is it the result of the service industry?
Is a ringtone?
Is it still if the wealthy demand one of a kind versions for an evening event, only to recycle them afterwards before the rest of the population can copy them?

BDolge Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> If you take consumer preference (utility) as the
> determinant of value you find that Hummers are
> better than Piruses

Not anymore! Now that Americans think gas will be $3+/gal for good, they are buying small cars with a vengeance. Consumers do respond to rational signals.

> The idea that a thing is
> always and only worth what someone will pay for it
> is the central delusion of capitalism.

This sort of statement could tempt me to respond that "the idea that a committee of experts appointed by a highly-political process open to hijacking by elite interests will make better allocation choices than independent individuals is the central delusion of most alternatives to capitalism." But I'm not sure how useful that would be. This sort of thing is fun, but let's save it for when we're sitting across from each other having a beer, mkay

> Is a personal trainer worth more than a school teacher?

This is not an entirely spurious argument, but before we get to that, let's start by bearing in mind that primary education, as an effectively 100% government-operated industry, is not subject to *any* of the market incentives of, say, the neighborhood gym. A personal trainer who makes his clients feel like losers and who never get into better shape will quickly find himself without clients, while those who do the opposite generally have to turn them away.

Generally speaking, the only reason for a teacher in today's system to try and do well is for his or her own personal satisfaction. Being known as a great teacher may get you the admiration of your peers, but raises and promotions are almost always determined by seniority, which is best achieved by keeping your head down and going along with the flow.

In any case, many teachers, perhaps most, are in it because they *like* working with kids, and would continue to do so even if the pay were cut further. To some extent this is a good thing, as these are likely to be better teachers than, say, those who do so because they enjoy the long vacations. I can come up with a long list of professions that pay more or less than teaching third-graders; does that mean they are more or less vital? It might simply mean that no one wants to clean sewers out.

> Markets undervalue societal goods and overvalue
> novelty.

s/Markets/Individual consumers/g

> Markets tend to ignore inputs and
> outputs that effect "commons" such as air, water,
> educated populous, rule of law, trustworthy
> markets etc.

Countries with an educated populace, solid rule of law, and trustworthy market mechanisms are, surprisingly enough, usually quite wealthy. Clean air and water are a better example for your argument. Laissez-faire economists (at least the ones I know) do not believe that clean air and water have no economic value, but they do believe that the mechanisms for assigning value and cost are problematic on some levels.

What is true is that on many measures of environmental health, the US is better today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Many rivers that had been used as industrial dumps are now full of breeding fish, and many types of smog and airborne pollutants have been reduced significantly. To a large extent, this has occurred because people came to place value on these things. Likewise, in China we are starting to see homegrown environmental lobbies around things like the Three Gorges dam and many smaller projects and issues. Concern for the environment tracks strongly with GDP. Because it is in many ways a transcendant good--e.g., "I want this river to be clean for my grandchildren"--it's something people will only expend resources on after their basic needs have been met. As people in China get richer, they will, like most Americans and Europeans, cease to tolerate extreme industrial pollution and the like.

> Markets are a useful part of society
> but making society into a market is a recipe for
> disaster.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "making society into a market."

In any case, part of the philosophy that I, and many other open-markets advocates share, is that capitalism's behaviors are to a large and perhaps determinant extent, epiphenomena. This doesn't mean we should simply accept them--man is also an ethical creature--but it does suggest that changing some of those behaviors might require measures that ultimately lead to injustices worse than the original issue they were intended to solve.

> I imagine that
> most people will respond to this by working less
> and developing hobbies or choosing more rewarding
> rather than renumerative jobs, rather than by
> simply moving down the employment food chain. I
> imagine that this technology will be
> environmentally more benign than the current mass
> production methods and will lead to a flattening
> of the wealth curve on both a local and a global
> scale. I imagine that this will make consumption
> less compulsive and advertising less useful than
> it is presently in the developed world. That's
> what I imagine.

What you describe is a nice world, but I don't know that I see a lot of rigor in it.

I agree with it to the extent that personal fabrication technologies will increase the value of knowledge (I can design a wonderful widget) versus capital (I own the factory that can make the widget you designed), and this sort of thing has generally led to a better state of society for all involved.

Where I disagree with it is that it ignores everything we know about economic behavior today in terms of consumption patterns, particularly in terms of the choice between leisure and employment.

Gasoline, to use one example, effectively got dramatically cheaper from 1970-2000 because of the declining real price of oil, as well as the increased fuel efficiency of the average car. Consumers responded by driving a lot more. I remember in the late 80s being very excited when my father bought us a 27" television--it was enormous, and priced accordingly. Electronic gadgets of every kind have dropped enormously in real price terms, and as a result, we now buy far more of them. My family, which was by any standard near the top end of the upper-middle class, did not take a vacation involving an airline flight until the mid-80s. As the cost of trans-continental flights dropped below $500, I would fly from Boston to the Bay Area to visit my sister for a three-day weekend.

Practically every one of us, particularly on this board where I suspect the level of education, skill, and income are well above median, could choose today to work less and leisure more. Everything I have seen in economic research, as well as my own personal and anecdotal experience, suggests that the work/leisure allocation is something of a fixed preference. In other words, if the average pay in a profession went up 20%, most people would continue to work just as much and consume 20% more. That said, we do see occasional shifts: the birth of a child, or a person close to us pass away, for instance, do cause many people to make major shifts in their personal preferences. And of course we do see cultural differences here, so it's clear that these preferences are not entirely static, though how dynamic they are is TBD.

Anyway, my guess is that the more successful RepRap is, the higher the price of real estate and personal trainers will go. I think the nature of work may very well change as enormously as it did in the past century, perhaps even more so, but a hundred years hence I suspect we will still be collecting paychecks and complaining about those cost of housing and something else. It will on the whole be a better world, but it will not be unrecognizable to us, just as a citizen of Rome circa 50BC would find much familiar in London or Manhattan today.

"Not anymore! Now that Americans think gas will be $3+/gal for good, they are buying small cars with a vengeance."

Data? My understanding is that large cars are still moving well due to steep discounts and financing deals offered by manufactures. Regardless, a Hummer today is the same vehicle it was 6 months ago. Does it or does it not have an intrinsic value? Does that value include it's effect on society or only society's effect on it?

"the idea that a committee of experts appointed by a highly-political process open to hijacking by elite interests will make better allocation choices than independent individuals is the central delusion of most alternatives to capitalism"

True, but not all alternatives require that. All economic systems are based on delusions, as are all political systems. The trick is to balance the various systematic delusions (political, economic, social, religious, etc) so that people have a chance to carve out a human life for themselves. Any system of allegiance is driven to eliminate competing systems, if it succeeds see Orwell's "1984". This is what I mean by making society into a market. There is a non-trivial portion of capitalist theorists who hold that all social interactions are resolvable via market means. If they succeed see Upton Sinclairs' 1910. The current demand in some quarters that all political decisions make "economic sense" is generally code for not disturbing the status quo regardless of how many people are being hurt. (See Health Care Financing) If politics restrains business the market will quickly find the minimum effort way to satisfy those demands, and politics will adapt to those methods and economics will adjust to the adaptation, etc. This dynamic is a good thing. To say that political decisions must make economic sense is the same as saying that economic decisions must make political sense. Each sphere sets boundaries on the other and over time society moves those boundaries but neither can be paramount.

"primary education, as an effectively 100% government-operated industry"

Actually the competition often pays less than the government and has lots of applicants for every position. My point is that as a society we value education, but our labor market refuses to compensate it at the same level as we pay life coaches and other jobs that everyone agrees are trivial and silly. There are lots of reasons for this but my point is that markets often make bad decisions, often based on the fact that normally markets will allow only yes/no decisions based almost exclusively on short term considerations.

"Countries with an educated populace, solid rule of law, and trustworthy market mechanisms are, surprisingly enough, usually quite wealthy."

Not surprisingly actually, but if you look at that list, none of those is a market product. All, in fact, are based on the idea that society will protect you from someone who wants to profit from your vulnerability.

"What is true is that on many measures of environmental health, the US is better today than it was 20 or 30 years ago"

Because of political not market forces. Manufacturers did not stop dumping sludge into rivers because their customers asked nicely, they did it because of the Clean Water Act, which manufacturers fought every step of the way, as economics dictated they must.

"but it does suggest that changing some of those behaviors might require measures that ultimately lead to injustices worse than the original issue they were intended to solve."

If your system cannot solve a critical problem then you need a new system. In science when you consistently get paradoxical results from your theoretical framework (paradigm) it means it is time to get a new one. In economics paradoxical results are taken as a sign that the topic of your study (human interaction) is inherently flawed. This tells me that economics is not a science.

"Where I disagree with it is that it ignores everything we know about economic behavior today in terms of consumption patterns, particularly in terms of the choice between leisure and employment. "

Actually no it doesn't. My assumption is that cheap, widely available fabrication will serve to "raise the floor", meaning a better standard of living will be available for less (or no) money (because you are paying raw material prices for most consumer items rather than paying other peoples wages. rent, profits, shipping, handling, etc.). Comparing places where the floor is low (US) to places where it is higher (most of Europe) you will find that most people work fewer hours per year when the floor is higher. France has a 30 hour work week, Most European workers get 4-8 weeks a year of vacation, young people often spend years traveling or living on the dole, old people retire earlier, regardless, Americans work more hours per year than any other industrial society.

"if the average pay in a profession went up 20%, most people would continue to work just as much and consume 20% more"

Perhaps because the job would demand more, not less, of our time in exchange for that money and stepping away from those demands would be the first step down towards that far off floor.

"It's clear that these preferences are not entirely static, though how dynamic they are is TBD"

True

"Anyway, my guess is that the more successful RepRap is, the higher the price of real estate and personal trainers will go."

"What you describe is a" not "nice world, but I don't know that I see a lot of rigor in it. " Why would cheaper widgets lead to more expensive houses?

"citizen of Rome circa 50BC would find much familiar in London or Manhattan today."

He would also find much incomprehensible. My job consists of sitting in a room by myself doing inexplicable things with a bizarre appliance. I haven't collected a paycheck in years (direct deposit) and have to make a special trip to get actual money. Mostly, I go places, get what I want, show someone my personal seal and leave with my stuff. Magic? Anarchy? Whatever.

I think a Roman would be amazed by how many servants I DON'T have. No messengers, no cooks, scullery workers, bath attendants, horse grooms, etc. Ego drives a lot of the economy and there will always be personal trainers, but technology has obsoleted many of these jobs not only because it's cheaper, but because it's better. No horse or sedan chair can provide transportation equivalent to a car. I think that in the long run RepRap can do the same thing to consumption. Why should spend most of a day going somewhere inconvenient in hopes that they will have something I want in their small stock of items that were designed last year by people I have nothing in common with when I can go online see the newest stuff from people whose taste I trust, pick something, customize it if I like, and have it in my bedroom an hour later? Thus the floor rises until it gets close enough to the ceiling that nobody cares. Some folks will love being personal trainers, I wish there was a market for shop teachers, if the floor was high enough to support my family I would run a hacker space and probably contribute a lot more to the betterment of the world than I do at this job. I certainly would have a working RepRap by now.

"Data? My understanding is that large cars are still moving well due to steep discounts and financing deals offered by manufactures."

Those steep discounts are my data. Five years ago there were waiting lists to buy large vehicles at sticker prices. Meanwhile small cars are selling at much smaller discounts and with order backlogs in many cases. It takes years for a trend like this to fully play out, but if these gas prices continue I wouldn't be surprised if the Hummer brand is gone five years from now.

The argument about teachers is interesting, but I'm not sure it's really germane to this forum, so I'm going to stop pursuing it, except to say that as a prime example of a service occupation, I'll bet a fab-heavy society will spend more on education.

"Perhaps because the job would demand more, not less, of our time in exchange for that money and stepping away from those demands would be the first step down towards that far off floor. "

In economic terms, mass-fabrication is in many ways the same thing as a pay raise: time is money, in the sense that I have to work X hours to buy widget Y, so if widgets become 50% cheaper overnight, while my pay stays the same, I am in a fundamental way that much wealthier.

"Why would cheaper widgets lead to more expensive houses?"

Because:

1. The cost of housing is determined primarily by the cost of land, the supply of which is fixed

2. The cost of land is therefore determined entirely by the demand for it; i.e., land in downtown Manhattan is costly because so many people want to buy it

3. People will most likely value housing more or less the same as they do today

4. People will therefore spend as much as they are able in order to obtain the sort of housing they desire, in terms of location, space, and style

5. Assuming that income stays the same, a reduction in the cost of manufactured goods will lead to an increase in the amount of income people have available to spend on other things, including housing.

This is not just theoretical speculation, either. In the 20th century, the real cost of food dropped enormously. Here is an interesting chart:

[www.ers.usda.gov]

In 1929, the average % of disposable income spent on food was roughly 23%, nearly all of which (20.3%) was for food consumed in the home. In 2006, the total income percentage was 9.9%, of which just over half (5.8%) was consumed at home. Unfortunately I've yet to locate a similar longitudinal number for housing, but I think we all know where that arrow's pointed over the past 10+ years at least.

Even if fabrication technologies completely replace conventional manufacturing techniques, in first-world economies, the consumption of goods (as opposed to services and housing) represent a shrinking minority of the whole. So we will all be able to afford having a Ferrari fabbed but we will all have to work 10-hour days to pay for a parking space for it. Already those of us who live in large, dense cities can see this if we swap the Ferrari for a Hyundai.

"Those steep discounts are my data"

My point is that markets often make bad choices. A Hummer is a bad choice and has been since day one. The fact that people are now making that bad choice for different reasons is irrelevant.

"In economic terms, mass-fabrication is in many ways the same thing as a pay raise: .... so if widgets become 50% cheaper overnight, while my pay stays the same, I am in a fundamental way that much wealthier. "

Except that, as you know, the wealthier you are the smaller a proportion of your income goes to widgets, So the increase in income you are talking about will accrue mostly to folks on the lower end of the spectrum. This is what I mean by raising the floor. Consider what Adrian has fabbed so far, A coat hook and a door knob are trivia to any of us, but a water filter could be life and death to some poor Asian guy. Reducing the cost of simple everyday goods is important to poor people, but really won't effect the rich, who don't use them much. If you make poverty less desperate you make it more tempting for people to do things that pay less but reward more in less material ways.

"The cost of housing is determined primarily by the cost of land, the supply of which is fixed"

Not so much,Tokyo is significantly larger than it was 50 years ago mostly from filling in the bay and most of the population growth in the American south has occurred since the advent of household air conditioning. This is not to mention all the new "land" we acquired when it became feasible to build more than 5 stories high.

" The cost of land is therefore determined entirely by the demand for it"

But demand is determined by other things. If farming comes to be a major food source Manhattan apartments will get cheap real fast. Land in the US south has become more expensive because it has access to non-union labor, land in the rust belt has become cheap because it lacks access to jobs.

" People will therefore spend as much as they are able in order to obtain the sort of housing they desire, in terms of location, space, and style"

But the housing they desire may well change in location, space and style (ie the rise and fall of the suburban tract house), not to mention the fact that people often compromise on any or all of these three based on the amount of money they want to spend.

" Assuming that income stays the same, a reduction in the cost of manufactured goods will lead to an increase in the amount of income people have available to spend on other things, including housing. "

What you are talking about here is a rise in price triggered by more dollars chasing the same of goods. There are several names for this, among them are "inflation" and "bubble". None of the others are any better. Things have values, most things have intrinsic values and markets sometimes lose track of that and it always ends badly.

"So we will all be able to afford having a Ferrari fabbed but we will all have to work 10-hour days to pay for a parking space for it."

Then I for one will not have a Ferrari, or I will move somewhere where it is cheaper to park. Many of the people I know who live in large, dense cities don't own cars for that very reason. As I understand it, you are saying that everyone will do an infinite amount of work if necessary in order to have a MacMansion in the burbs somewhere. I don't agree. I think people balance their desire for stuff against their desire for time and freedom and security and relationships and that social norms have a lot of effect on that calculus and that a technology like RepRap is likely to effect social norms quite a bit.

BDolge Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> the floor. Consider what Adrian has fabbed so
> far, A coat hook and a door knob are trivia to any
> of us, but a water filter could be life and death
> to some poor Asian guy.

This is an area where I have very mixed feelings. Right now I see the barriers to entry in fabbing as enormously high in terms of availability of parts, materials, skills, etc. The other side of me looks at mobile phones. Also, cheap offshore labor is what is responsible for much of the economic growth in Asia over the past fifty years--first in Japan, then South Korea and Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and finally China and India. Mass manufacturing actually set India back in many ways at the outset of the industrial age by choking off the indigenous textile industry.

> Reducing the cost of
> simple everyday goods is important to poor people,
> but really won't effect the rich, who don't use
> them much.

By global standards, everyone above the poverty line in the first world is well-off. I'll grant you the possibility of this being true in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty is truly extreme. For reasons mentioned above, I'm skeptical whether their real problem is access to technology, or, as in your previous message, education, the rule of law, and access to global capital and markets.

> If you make poverty less desperate you
> make it more tempting for people to do things that
> pay less but reward more in less material ways.

I think in order for this to happen you need to take wealth way beyond simple consumer goods. Until then, I see people reallocating all their gains from cheaper manufacturing to other goods, such as housing, education, healthcare, and other goods and services which constitute the vast majority of personal spending in the developed world. Hell, most of us choose to work for The Man even though we are way above the 'desperate poverty' line.

> "The cost of housing is determined primarily by
> the cost of land, the supply of which is fixed"
>
> Not so much,Tokyo is significantly larger than it
> was 50 years ago mostly from filling in the bay
> and most of the population growth in the American
> south has occurred since the advent of household
> air conditioning. This is not to mention all the
> new "land" we acquired when it became feasible to
> build more than 5 stories high.

All priced in already. The glory days of land reclamation are largely behind us, at least in the developed world. Even where it is still going on, the cost per square meter of land is staggering. And building higher isn't free--a square foot of ranch house is a small fraction of the cost of a square foot of 80-story tower construction.

> " The cost of land is therefore determined
> entirely by the demand for it"
>
> But demand is determined by other things. If
> farming comes to be a major food source Manhattan
> apartments will get cheap real fast.

All true, but, I see no reason why RepRap and the like will make living in Manhattan less desirable or living in North Dakota more so. In fact, I expect the chasm to widen further, because things like RepRap increase the value of the sort of very high-end knowledge and information work that goes on primarily in very large cities.

> What you are talking about here is a rise in
> price triggered by more dollars chasing the same
> of goods. There are several names for this, among
> them are "inflation" and "bubble". None of the
> others are any better.

Well, it's fascinating actually, because it might actually be a bit more complicated than that. Inflation is traditionally understood as a broad monetary phenomenon, or, "too many dollars chasing too few goods" as you say. But, this is different. In this case, we can assume the amount of money in circulation stays the same. Meanwhile, the supply of some goods increases significantly.

For coat hooks and door knobs, you will see *deflation*. The monetarists will tell you that real inflation, the ugly kind of which you rightly speak, only happens when the supply of money grows too fast. In this scenario, it does not. I haven't thought this through all the way, but it is really interesting.

> Things have values, most
> things have intrinsic values and markets sometimes
> lose track of that and it always ends badly.

Again, this is subjective mumbo-jumbo. Gold has intrinsic value because humanity has over the course of several millennia continued its fondness for shiny yellow metal. Aluminum was once worth more than platinum. I bet we will see the same thing happen in the next 10-20 years with manufactured diamonds. Value is never intrinsic, it is set by the intersection of demand and supply, both of which are variable to different degrees for each item. Some items are truly scarce and truly high demand, but they are not intrinsically worth any more than we choose for them to be, as you said about the ridiculous cost for "life coaches."

> "So we will all be able to afford having a Ferrari
> fabbed but we will all have to work 10-hour days
> to pay for a parking space for it."
>
> Then I for one will not have a Ferrari, or I will
> move somewhere where it is cheaper to park. Many
> of the people I know who live in large, dense
> cities don't own cars for that very reason. As I
> understand it, you are saying that everyone will
> do an infinite amount of work if necessary in
> order to have a MacMansion in the burbs somewhere.
> I don't agree.

No--what I said was that people will (i) continue to do what they do now, which is to strike their preferred balance between consumption (paid for by labor) and leisure; and (ii), that the cost of non-fabbable goods will increase by at least as much as the cost of fabbable goods decreases. People do not work infinite hours today--look at people working 60 hours a week, and you will find many who will tell you they decided to stay off the fast track, which would have implied 80+.

> I think people balance their
> desire for stuff against their desire for time and
> freedom and security and relationships and that
> social norms have a lot of effect on that calculus

Yes, agreed 100%

> and that a technology like RepRap is likely to
> effect social norms quite a bit.

I am open to being convinced of this--this is the heart of the issue, I think, or one of several, but so far you haven't offered anything more than anodynes about why this would be so.

In my view, a highly-successful RepRap-type system means a very deep reduction in the cost of manufactured goods, which account for a minority share of consumer spending, and a limited though perhaps larger share of total factor productivity. A really, really good RepRap will not make a medical doctor inexpensive, for instance, but will make all sorts of medical hardware cheaper and thus have some effect. Again, this all adds up to what I said before, which is something like the decline in the real cost of food throughout the 20th century, or the declining cost of oil (and energy more generally) from 1980-2000, both of which were very good things in terms of the general welfare.

True nanoscale molecular assembly is another ballgame--if that comes to pass in form anything like the scifi authors have suggested, then I'm not sure whether the current models hold up well. But short of that, which may be impossible--fusion has been achieved in a lab, albeit in an energy-losing system, which molecular assembly remains more or less theoretical--what we're looking at here is a large, significant, but not civilization-re-shaping change in what it costs to make physical goods, which form an ever-smaller part of overall spending.