Material abundance for all the people of the earth could become a reality. Not long ago, such a forecast would have been ridiculed. At its heart, the coming revolution in manufacturing is a continuation of trends that date back decades and even centuries. Manufacturing has been getting more precise, more diverse and less expensive for over fifty years. The remarkably low manufacturing cost comes from self replication.
Molecular machines can make more molecular machines, which can make yet more molecular machines.
While the research and development costs for the first such systems are likely to be quite high, the incremental manufacturing costs of a system able to make more systems like itself can be very low. Wood, for example, is a complex product made from tens of thousands of proteins and a host of complex molecular machines. Yet we think nothing of slicing a piece of wood into a convenient slab and using it for a table. While nanotechnology does propose to use self replication, it does not propose to copy living systems. Living systems are wonderfully adaptable and can survive in a complex natural environment.