What If? Advanced 3D Printer Technology was created and mass produced?

[CarlManvers2019]

And yes, you can make the individual parts for many machines, even weapons

All you need is metal slabs and electricity

How would this affect the world in the long run if in theory, cities are somewhat less needed in order to provide tools that even those in provinces need for farming and mining and other works?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Socially speaking, the cities still have a lot to provide that the country doesn't. Being able to find five different ethnic restaurants within a fifteen minute walk of your apartment, easy access to entertainment, often of better quality (live music performances and concerts, f'rex, or amusement parks).

The flipside is that the Rurals also have much to give that cities can't, such as peace and quiet, being able to see a deer eating on your lawn first thing in the morning, and knowing everybody in your local village by name.

Right now cities are winning for the simple reason that the factories are in the cities and therefore the jobs are in the cities. With that taken out from under I'd expect to see the rural side stop dying and begin to expand a bit, likely reaching equilibrium after a point depending on populations. Some people like the bright lights and city streets and would want to stay while others want to quiet of the countryside and would move.

The social upheaval though, would be horrific. A large majority of the economy runs on consumer spending habits. Suddenly, a majority of those items don't need to be made. A [Insert currently popular children's character] mask for ten dollars or I can just print my own for 4 cents of plastic tubing? Hmm, let me think about that. Yeah, think I'll go with the printed mask.

This may ironically lead to some severe improvement in the entertainment industry. The Merch is a major factor in movie profitability, movies that are relatively poor performers are often forgiven if their Merch sells well and some decisions that seem extremely strange (Such as killing almost the entire Autobot cast in the opening of the Transformers Movie only to quickly introduce their slightly-different replacements) often make sense once you take the Merch into account. Ironically this means movies will have to make money and stand on their own two feet, no longer able to ride the toyetic shoulders of their Merch.

Innovation may increase dramatically. With millions of people coming up with new things to sculpt, we may start finding solutions to problems we didn't even know we have. Problems we know we have will have more people coming up with solutions to them using their 3D printer. Some businesses will get a tremendous boost, for instance antique cars are often irreparable because the parts simply don't exist anymore and there's nothing to be done. There's an entire industry built around "Restomods" for people who really want to restore a car but the parts don't exist anymore. With 3D printers they'll be able to make the lost parts but car enthusiasts won't stop there, they'll start modding. Once that happens the innovative tools and techniques they create will get out and be applied across the board leading to all kinds of new inventions, not just cars. but all fields of interest.

Over time I'd expect a major shift as the initial upheaval slows down. Copyright law will need to be written into something saner but probably won't. Merchandising will be harder and that's a good thing. Ultimately the wealthy with working factories will be able to do more advanced printing and will have an edge in quality, but they can't push their profit margins very hard. Expect a lot of focus on brand names and veblen gooding even cheap items. Ad campaigns will stress how you can only get a real Louis Vuitton plastic sippy cup from one place, and it's not your 3D printer but authorized dealerships. How many people will listen, well...

 

[CarlManvers2019]

@Bear Ribs
Strangely, from my finance and investing and money and management advice books

There is a point how people will spend huge amounts of money for pointless and actually cheaper to get things, just cause say, it was signed by somebody or its made from some rare material but works the same as anything else of its kind

Or just the fact that it’s handmade even, will get buyers....waste of money though in my opinion

 

[Bear Ribs]

@Bear Ribs
Strangely, from my finance and investing and money and management advice books

There is a point how people will spend huge amounts of money for pointless and actually cheaper to get things, just cause say, it was signed by somebody or its made from some rare material but works the same as anything else of its kind

Or just the fact that it’s handmade even, will get buyers....waste of money though in my opinion

I would absolutely expect that to continue to happen and even increase, however that's a relatively niche market. Provenance is an important part of value, people will pay more for a solid silver bowl, or a first edition book signed by the author, but people don't buy only silver and use it as their main tableware nor only read books that are signed by the author. There's at least several thousand cheap plastic bowls and stainless steel forks in Wal-Mart for ever solid silver one a person uses, and the same for cheap downloaded ebooks for every signed first edition.

Put another way, mass-produced lightsaber replicas sold for a 1,000 percent markup are what would be replaced by 3D printing, not the collector's item lightsaber that was actually used by Mark Hamill when filming.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

@Bear Ribs
How would this affect less economically advanced societies and nations? They’d on average have less money and electricity to spend on the materials for a 3D Printer

Though, I think they’d be less likely to go to the cities from then on

 

[Bear Ribs]

@CarlManvers2019
That's tremendously dependent on how much electricity a 3D printer uses, as well as what they want to print. There's also a certain amount of leeway based on what "parts for machines" means. I'm taking it to mean discrete, relatively homogeneous non-moving parts, like a single gear or a shaft, not entire complex machines or electronics like a transmission or a computer monitor. If you can basically print a working car in three or four steps and just fasten the bits together that's a whole different ballgame.

As things stand, the more impoverished nations wouldn't be put on the same level as richer nations but it might level things slightly. You can see third-world nations today keeping things like old Toyota trucks that are easy to maintain going to decades by carefully purchasing a few parts and making the simpler ones locally. This would make that process much easier and facilitate building simpler machines in-house, but wouldn't let those nations get, say, a modern jet liner fleet so it wouldn't be a complete leveler by any means.

3D printing is more expensive and less efficient than traditional manufacturing techniques, however it's cheaper than traditional manufacturing techniques +300% markup by the wholesaler + shipping across the ocean +300% more markup by the retailer. Smart 3rd world nations will leverage this by using the 3D printer, plus free downloaded plans, to build the machines to build the machines, that is using 3D printer parts to assemble factories that can build things they need a lot of more cheaply. Even if you can't 3D print a jetliner you could, with downloaded schematics and a more education population base, 3D print parts to build a welder that you put on an assembly line to eventually builds an airplane.

Alternately some leaders will confiscate all the printers because people making their own stuff would threaten their control and profits from their backer's monopolies. Sadly this is probably a slightly more likely outcome.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Alternately some leaders will confiscate all the printers because people making their own stuff would threaten their control and profits from their backer's monopolies. Sadly this is probably a slightly more likely outcome.

All hail the Black Market(s)

That said, I think some people could try banning it by saying its environmentally unfriendly or something