[extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Dan Clemmensen]

This looks good to me. I would suggest some minor changes as noted below

Robin Hanson wrote:

> 1.  Atomic Precision:  Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put 
> some atoms where we want.
>
> Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new 
> products may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and 
> perhaps medical devices that float in our bloodstreams. 

I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. There 
is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design of 
"hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of any type.

I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation 
products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I 
correct in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of current 
economic models?

>
> 2.  General Plants:  General purpose manufacturing plants, using a 
> limited range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose 
> plants, like general purpose computers have now displaced most special 
> purpose signal processors.  (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct 
> manufacturing.")
>
> As with computers, this requires that the efficiencies of special 
> purpose devices be overcome by the scale economies and lower design 
> costs of general purpose devices.  When transportation costs matter, 
> products would likely be made at the general plants nearest to each 
> customer. 

I suggest you replace "signal processors" with "control systems."

Energy costs are crucially important here. If the energy cost is higher 
in a GP plant, it may be better to buy from a specialty plant.

>
> 3.  Local Production:  Small general plants, located in or near homes, 
> dominate manufacturing.
>
> This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, 
> with human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to 
> design.  Here costs of transportation and labor for manufacturing are 
> mostly eliminated; what remain are costs of design, marketing, 
> regulation, feedstocks, and rental of general plants.  As with PCs 
> today, open source product design and file sharing of stolen product 
> designs could become issues. 

I do not understand the economics of IP very well. The term "stolen" is 
value-laden.

Note that humanity already creates sophisticated products in the home 
from simple mass-produced parts. it's called "cooking." There is no 
reason that final assembly must be fully automated.

>
> 4.  Over-Capacity:  Local general plants are so fast/cheap that they 
> are usually off, like PCs now.
>
> For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and 
> marketing.  Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would 
> dominate total costs, as with software and music today.  Like software 
> and cable TV companies that now offer a small menu of product packages 
> to price-discriminate via anti-correlations in item values, future 
> consumers might be offered a few lifestyle packages that cost most of 
> their salary and entitle them to designs for clothes, furniture, food, 
> etc.  This would require high concentration of or coordination by 
> sellers of consumer good designs. 

I think that the cost of energy is a crucial marginal cost. It is almost 
certainly more important than the marginal marketing cost, unless I 
misunderstand the term "marketing" as used in economics. Mitigating 
against this is the fact that "radical MNT" may drive the marginal cost 
of energy toward zero.  In economic terms, radical nanotech may drive 
the capital cost of using low-density energy (solar and geothermal) 
toward zero.

I see a distinction between "IP goods" (software, music, and movies) and 
physical goods. Radical nanotech erases the distinction: the essential 
social effect here is that anyone who is willing to live with only 
open-source IP can live "for free" and does not need to participate in 
the economy. CAVEAT: if we exclude "bioware," then anyone who drops out 
in this fashion will be in trouble when they need medical help.

>
> 5.  Self-Reproduction:  A local manufacturing plant can create a copy 
> of itself within a year.
>
> This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general 
> plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and 
> sudden cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first 
> develops achieves it.  How large an advantage depends on just-prior 
> costs, and how sudden depends on self-reproduction time.  
> Self-reproducing military or terrorist weapons become a concern. 

It is very difficult ot construct a "radical MNT" scenario that does not 
result in self-reproduction of local manufacturing. Therefore, it is not 
clear that this is a primary assumption. I take this as a consequence of 
assumptions 1 and 2.

As always, we run the risk that your audience will reject the entire 
"radical MNT scenario" because this single conclusion is inevitible, but 
it completely disrupts the existing economy.