And of course, not everything is manufactured. Food for instance. Also, people want luxury goods. It will be interesting when someone steals the exact specifications for a Rolex, puts it online, and everyone gets to make one ;’) Ah, the patent lawyers are going to have a field day.

I recall ten years ago that scientists said that even if there was global warming it would take a hundred years at the least. Yet now both poles are melting – so forget the politics – just look at pole pictures. They apparently missed some positive feedback like methane emissions. Even nature seems to be accelerating.

They also serve who only stand and wait. Also, people create different kinds of values. A good mother creates value, too, by raising good kids, but this is not recognized in our current economy.

Actually, both Buckminster Fuller and The Triple Revolution Document said the same thing decades ago – we have been at the brink of a twenty hour week for a long time. Our judgmental and wasteful and plain stupid economic systems have kept us back.

For instance, when talking about cost reductions they could have showed the cost of 3D printing compared to traditional manufacturing for the last ten years.

Plus, then wouldn’t there be no incentive for anyone to create value? And if so, then who would do the work? Just because we can’t sustain 100% employment doesn’t mean we don’t need anyone working!

Current trends: a) more and more goods and services are being produced with intelligent automation replacing human labor; b)Wealth and income are moving to the higher income levels; c) political rhetoric and influence is being controlled by the very rich and; d) the 1% are reducing the political power of the 99% by suppressing their vote.

Future trends:
1. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is being replaced with government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation. [Corporations are people too my friend- Mitt Romney]. The 99% will eventually have little or no political power.
2. Labor costs will continue to be reduced with the 99% moving to serfdom.
3. Unemployment will increase as human labor becomes more and more obsolete and is replaced with intelligent automation.

When most of the income and assets is in the hands of the 1%, the economy will depend only on the spending of the 1%. Walmart and other stores that cater to the masses will rapidly disappear.

With no need for labor by corporations, welfare support of any type (food, clothing, shelter, education and health care) will be an unnecessary burden on the 1% as they will be paying for it with no return on their investment.

For the 99% there will be tendency for the 1% to, as in the words of Ron Paul supporters, let them die.

Our future choices:
1. A reduction of 90 to 99% of the population with only 100 to 900 million wealthy people in the world remaining. This is the dream world of the libertarian and an environmentalist paradise.
2. A complete change in the economic system with more equal distribution of wealth to the remaining 8 billion people. This conflicts with with current world’s social, religious and political societies and be extremely difficult to achieve.
3. Expanding economic, religious and social conflict in the world leading to world war III.

Robby the Robot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Now imagine that it takes half of the day to print the next printer, and half the day to print and assemble the next robot. By the start of the second day you’ll have two, the next day four, and so on until before the end of the month you’ll have over a billion robots. Just check it out with your calculator. Enter one times two then click the equal sign while you count to thirty. After the first robot and printer start to double their numbers, you get 1,073,741,824 robots in the next 30 days.

Of course you won’t really get past that billion in your first month. When the weather looks bad you’ll have to take some printers out of robot production to print out shingles for the roof and panes for all the broken windows. You’ll even print up the hammers and nails. Then you’ll print up solar arrays to reduce the power bill of running all those printers and keeping all those robots charged up.

But in short order, you’ll have a shitload of 3D printers and robots.