[extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Robin Hanson]

At 05:03 AM 11/15/2003 +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
> > 2.  A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are 
> less
> > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of
> > production time, material waste, or final product quality. ...
>
>Would production time really be a very important factor?  Unless the
>production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this
>affecting much at the consumer end.  I agree with both other factors.

Well time matters as it effects the overall throughput of the factory.

> > 4.  The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is
> > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now
> > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design.  So it is not 
> clear
> > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the
> > economy.
>
>I'd guess that it'd would change the service market which subsists on
>the delivery of the manufactured goods (ie transport, and more
>importantly, retail) since both are likely to become less important if
>not superfluous.  Both of these sectors, i assume, are a rather larger
>chunk of the economy.

In the usual division, transportation is not part of service, but its own 
sector.

> > 5.  If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing
> > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of
> > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing
> > the social impact of this transition.
> >
>Depends on the cost of the ordinary PGMD.  If it can be made by
>specialised factories for the cost of say, a car or 3d-printer or lower,
>then i'd imagine it would reach saturation quite quickly (using
>"saturation" quite loosely, and estimating at one per house).

Agreed.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323