Chapter 15 
Makerism
Cooperate globally, make locally
Makerism is an economic system that does not yet exist. The term is ours. In Capitalism, those who own the means of production are rich but few. In Makerism, those who own the means of production are also rich but everyone owns their own means of production, so everyoneÕs rich. Wealth isnÕt traded (much) but is inherently distributed because it is made (as needed) and consumed by its creators. 
Compared to the present American middle class lifestyle, Makerism aims for:
¥	Higher quality computational resources
¥	Transportation via Personal Rapid Transit and other innovative solutions
¥	Many trips displaced by higher fidelity communications, hyperlocal manufacturing, drone delivery
¥	User controlled and executed preventative health care
¥	Smaller, more insulated houses
¥	More energy and water efficient appliances 
¥	Less, but more useful, stuff, often more customized to meet our individual needs
¥	More recycling: for instance, melting plastic goods to feed back into 3D printers
The technology of Makerism
Makerism depends on advanced, multi-purpose microfactories that can manufacture the material goods that individuals need to live a healthy, comfortable life. 
The relevant processes are: printing, growing, cutting, casting, folding and assembling. Computers automate the machines that run these processes, taking the time and drudgery out of making. A good book on the many different kinds of machines and modern techniques for making is Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing [Lipson 2012]. The forerunners of these microfactories are todayÕs 3D printers, personal Subtractive manufacturing (called CNC) machines, laser cutters, aeroponic gardens and solar cells. 
The typical, inexpensive 3d printer of 2018 is about a cubic foot in size, costing about $1K and can print plastic objects about a 6 inch cube in size. It has an extruder head that squeezes out molten plastic. By moving in the two horizontal dimensions, it can print a layer, then move up and print another layer on top. Printing tiny objects can take minutes whereas larger ones can take hours. 
What things need to be made by the microfactories?
The most revolutionary thing a microfactory should be able to make is a copy of itself. This will include structural parts of plastic and metal, fasteners like nuts and bolts, electrical conductors for circuits and motors. Batteries and solar cells (or wind turbines) for power generation are also necessary. High resolution integrated circuits are a particular challenge, but progress on all of these fronts is continuing. 
It is unlikely that a single-design microfactory will be the best for producing everything, especially those things that individuals need lots of. Number one in that category is food. We anticipate super-efficient microfarms using aeroponics (grown in air on a mesh) to supply fruits and vegetables ˆ la [OpenAg 2017]. Aquaponic fish farming may also be used along with algae-growing microfarms, particularly good at supplying protein, fats, oils and vitamins. Those oils can be turned into bio-plastic and used as raw materials for our 3D printer. Textile producing machines are likely another specialty, for example [Kniterate 2016]. 
Larger, less commonly needed machines for furniture and house printing might be Òneighborhood ownedÓ [Costrel 2015]. Another strategy for large things is to print manageble-sized blocks and have a human assemble them. A chair might have 10 large parts and a bunch of fasteners. The essential parts of a house can be made with about 5K cubic-foot or less sized blocks. If it took a human an average of 5 minutes to place and secure each one, thatÕs 417 hours, or a summerÕs worth of work for one person. Trading a summer for 30 years of mortgage payments sounds pretty attractive, especially if most other jobs have also been automated out of existence. With more advanced robots we can significantly shorten that summer of work.
The economics of Makerism
When a 3D printer can copy itself, its cost is merely time and raw materials. Time becomes not so expensive because as printers can copy themselves, you can have more than one of them and they can print in parallel. Raw materials can be expensive, but most things you want are made out of rather common elements: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen all of which exist in air. Dirt, leaves and other biological waste can form feedstock. Bioplastics can be made from algae which can be grown in a microfarm mentioned above. Aluminum is harder to come by but devices for extracting aluminum from dirt on the cheap have been designed along with many other tools for producing fundamental goods [Enigmatic 2016]. 
Direct recycling of unused items, especially plastic, is easy. Just melt it down and start over. With parameterized design, goods can be built with different material sets appropriate to the location of manufacture. The ability to make solar cells or wind turbines gets rid of electric bills.
Why transition from Capitalism to Makerism?
First, Makerism has the potential to be much more efficient than Capitalism. Roughy 3/4ths of a retail goodÕs price is not manufacturing. Financing, labor and its management, transportation, distribution, warehousing, advertising, sales and taxes, all have middlemen with their fingers in the till. Under Makerism, all that disappears. You make what you need, period. With advanced printers, this will not be hard. 
Second, being able to customize/innovate by Òmaking your ownÓ lets you tailor your possessions to fit, yielding a far greater variety than even todayÕs massive malls and on-line stores. 
Third, people just like to make stuff. They like to make it easy to make stuff, so they like to make tools. Unlike making software, making physical objects is more understandable, because it can take advantage of our evolved expertise at perceiving and manipulating physical objects.
Fourth, (this is the killer) we may well be pushed into Makerism by the collapse of Capitalism outlined in the chapter Can Capitalism be saved?. (Spoiler: Probably not!) Survival will encourage (to put it mildly) people becoming more self-reliant. Much greater self-reliance was the norm for most of human history, so we are not without precedent here. 
But development of the technology will be harder from a position of poverty, so however much we can advance before jobs disappear, will greatly ease the transition. We expect this transition to take a decade or three, depending on how much effort is spent refining printers. The process has begun, though it has yet to have a major impact on the economy. 
Most large scale change agents rely on ÒactivismÓ, i.e. organizing a large group of people to push for the change. In the late 1960Õs there was a large anti-war movement driven, not just by being against something, but by having the more positive goal of improving the world by promoting peace and love. These are worthy goals. 
Unfortunately, empathy for others has proved to be insufficient. Merely making and distributing a huge quantity of 3D printers will not be sufficient either. But the combination of fine-grained distributed wealth creation as well as empathy may crack this age-old nut. Reducing scarcity will drive sharing and even greater wealth creation, in a positive feedback loop that promises to establish true civilization.
Makerism is not an end goal, it is a strategy. It is not an ideology. It is appropriate and efficient engineering. It does not need to get started. ThatÕs already happened. It does not need much more organization or motivation than its already got, nor does it need more ÒapprovalÓ from the status quo. However, the clock is ticking. 
Meet the Makers
A Maker is a person that makes a variety of useful things. They do not sell the things they make, though they may give them away or perhaps trade with other makers. They enjoy giving away their designs for other makers to learn from and improve upon.
The antonym of ÒmakerÓ is ÒconsumerÓ. A century ago and earlier, many more people were makers. A good example is a sheep herder who managed grazing fields (and thus manages solar energy), sheered sheep, spun yarn and knitted it into clothing. People ÒconsumedÓ much of what they made.
The industrial revolution introduced Òeconomies of scaleÓ, luring most factory workers into making a single kind of item, usually of a good they did not themselves use. Thus a worker made only a tiny percentage of what they actually consumed. But these processes also led to dis-economies of scale, where the added expenses are measured not in money, but in control, pollution, dissatisfaction, competition and alienation from other humans.
There is no official certification for becoming a maker, nor any official organization or trade union, nor will there ever be. There are a loosely organized series of Maker Faires hosted throughout the world. The first was in San Francisco in 2006. In 2015 there were 150 Maker Faires on every continent that people live. Millions of people have gone to Maker Faires. Some makers work at existing university and business research labs, while others work in basements or start-ups, many of which receive initial funding from crowdfunded websites like Kicksarter.
What does Makerism solve?
The key characteristics that define an economic system are: How wealth is created; and how wealth is distributed. Throughout most of human history, the creation of wealth has been the larger problem. Now our means of production are sufficient to create enough, but we have localized scarcity in much of the world. Makerism solves both the production of wealth and its distribution. For the first time in history, we have the potential to achieve a comfortable lifestyle for all.
According to [Mullainathan 2013], people that are poor, are literally better at managing money. They are experts at getting the most utility from a dollar. But this attention to detail comes at a cost, estimated to be 10 IQ points. It seems the concentration on scarcity limits ability to reason in other areas. Fortunately this is temporary: if the scarcity disappears, so does the IQ deficit. So the first problem we reduce by reducing scarcity is stupidity. Scarcity of nutrition, especially while young, causes a more permanent deficit in IQ. Poor overall healthcare affects both physical and mental well-being, so reducing healthcare scarcity offers multiple benefits. 
A scarcity of security is a bit more complex. If you live in a low-income neighborhood, your stuff is more likely to be stolen. Besides all the above problems, ÒPhysical insecurity often undermines opportunities for girls to benefit from quality education, good health and decent work, and prevents her from engaging meaningfully with, and benefiting from, society and the economyÓ. More profoundly: Òwhile poverty can be a cause of physical insecurity, physical insecurity also further perpetuates chronic poverty.Ó [CPRC 2016]. Poverty causes poverty.
Humans have a deep sense of fairness. This causes all sorts of problems. If weÕre deciding how to cut the cake, should we give everyone the same portion, (with endless complaints about accuracy) or sick/hungrier/bigger people more, or what? The Makerism solution is, print more cakes so that everyone has as much as they want. We do not subscribe to the theory that people want an infinite amount of cake, especially if they are secure in the knowledge that they can always get more cake if they want it.
By solving scarcity, we solve property crimes. We solve most contention in divorce. Patents become moot. Most legal issues evaporate and with them the need for lawyers, whose primary tactic is to cause animosity to extract more wealth from their clients. With this reduced need for Justice and laws, one big government expense goes down. 
Our government now expends a lot for shared infrastructure, but under Makerism, wealth will decrease the need for infrastructure further decreasing the requirements and cost of government and, its inherent corruption under Capitalism. 
When is this going to happen?
These technologies are advancing more rapidly than any other technology today. The range of materials, resolution, speed of manufacturing, and ability to combine multiple technologies, are not yet good enough for Makerism. But innovations on these fronts are occurring surprisingly regularly. 
The chapter A Day in the Post-Scarcity Life gives a bunch of specifics. The goal of the RepRap project is to make a printer that can print all of its own parts. The September 2015 version, named ÒSnappyÓ can print 73% of its parts [RepRap 2015]. We expect that the achievement of a practical self-printing machine will spark a takeoff in the ubiquity of personal manufacturing. 
Civilization
WeÕve dumped pretty hard on Capitalism. To be fair, historically, Capitalism has raised the standard of living for billions of people. But now, the very mechanisms by which Capitalism has created benefits, now act to limit those benefits. 
A generally winning strategy to overcome these weaknesses of individuals is civilization. By amassing the knowledge and motivation of a large number of people, we have the potential to overcome the shortcomings of individuals and small groups. This has been a work-in-progress since humans began. 
To be sure, humans have numerous limiting cognitive biases. Among the most relevant for our economy are: selfishness, immediate gratification, confusion in the face of complexity, risk management and fear, all of which impair our ability to reason. Most of humanity is out of the jungle, but the jungle is not out of humanity. 
We outline a new kind of economic system called Makerism, that promises to elegantly solve wealth creation and distribution like no previous system could have. ItÕs hard to improve other aspects of society, such as government, when scarcity pits us against one another. Makerism is therefore the enabling condition for civilization.