Last I’ve read, these printing machines are not capable of painting, laying bricks, and applying tile. The vast majority of people who can afford nicer homes are not going to want concrete walls made from layers squeezed out of a tube.
If we are so concerned about automation, then I have a few suggestions.
Ban refrigerators, it will bring back the Milk Man and the Ice Man
Ban combines, it will mean the average crop harvest will need thousands of people with sickles (per farm at modern sizes)
Ban fruit picking machines, orchards will suddenly need hundreds of people to pick and sort.
Ban private cars, imagine the hundreds of thousands of taxi drivers that will be needed
Ban personal computers, millions of jobs created because people will need to hire for tasks they can’t learn on their own anymore (due to lack of automation and no YouTube). Thousands of postal jobs created as well because of the millions of letters that will need transport. No CGI will mean a surge in jobs for set builders and jobs in hundreds of new hobby stores. Brick & mortar will also come back and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Ban lightbulbs, bring back the candlestick makers
Ban personal washing machines, bring back the laundromats
Ban planes, ocean liners require more people to run than flying tubes.
Your life would suck, but everyone will have a job at least.
That will not help with global warming to cut trees at lightning speed to place those houses on one floor.
A family means that 20 years later, Kids will need their own house.
And 40 years later, grand children will need their own , too, before death of their grand parents.
Does anybody have already seen a 3d printed building made of 3 or 6 floors ?
We need to ban electric saws and electric mills too, remember when foresting required at least two people per saw and several minutes to go halfway through a tree (so many such saws will be needed)? That is not to mention all of the new ax men who will be needed to chop the fallen wood.
It might sound like I’m being stupid at this point, but if we’re talking about eliminating automation to save and/or bring back jobs, then you can go pretty far.
Do you really think this is a realistic scenario you paint there? Your answer reminds me a bit of Captain Hindsight (no offense intended). We all know what has to happen to prevent this, but the question is how to do it in profit based dog-eat-dog society.
Well, it was a response to the whole internet trend of condemning any and all new forms of automation that comes out (because of the potential of the loss of jobs that don’t require a particularly high skill level, even if it means the cost of something going down).
In the US, a few states have even gone so far as to ban some low-level forms of automation and efficiency, because of the belief it does little more than create limited opportunities, unemployment, and poverty (ie. banning self-service gas stations).
Sounds like “pissing in the river and watching it rise” to me (Patty Smith). Some quick political moves right before an election to get some extra votes out of it.
Well, not at light speed of course, but this might come a bit as a suprise for most, do you know that china planted over 70 million trees (might be more by now this figure is from 2018). Every chinese is called upon to plant at least one tree in his life. Also China is first land in the world who successfully stopped expansion of the Gobi desert by planting trees. By their calculation China will have planted up to 100 billion trees in 2050. Even Nasa puplished satelite pictures in 2019 about it and admit that china has become a pioneer in environment protection.
Meanwhile in the west we still discussing that something has to be done and come up with some shady new energy deals (Planet of the Humans)
China makes a whole lot more sense to me than any carbon taxes, e-cars, bio diesel and what else they have planned to make richie rich richer.
One proven good thing does not negate all of the horrors going on in that country though, hence why I take offense at the idea that China just makes sense.
Expanding on that, I think the vast majority of the planet’s nation states appear to fail in discovering the most efficient and sensible solution to a vast array of problems. In my opinion, the most effective solutions are ones that do not exactly come from the state, simply because it does not see heavy influence by bureaucracy or political interests (such as some of these housing projects). Giving the homeless a house is only step one though, step two is teaching them skills to maintain the new dwelling, search for jobs, or start a business.
The implication that the homeless don’t have skills is ignorant. The homeless population here in Portland OR is as skilled as anyone else. They make excellent use of discarded materials to build shelter, fix appliances, and craft the means of survival. On average, they are more gracious, more hard-working, and consume far less resources than the people here who own homes. I’ve even seen someone build a treehouse in my neighborhood, complete with a drawbridge and bicycle parking. It was removed later, presumably by the police.
A 3d-printed home will do nothing for someone if we currently cannot even grant them a patch of fallow ground on which to pitch a tent. The issue of homelessness is not technological, nor is it the fault of the homeless. Technology is a fetish, and blaming the homeless is just a vehicle for avoiding the truth as well
These 3D printed homes though are meant for Africa and other places where deep poverty is normal, illiteracy is normal, and education is poor to non-existent. I don’t think the level of skill is the same as in the big west coast cities.
Even tho we talking about a totalitarian system, you can’t deny that they did some things right like their efforts to protect there environment i already mentioned or their investment in Africa to build a infrastructure instead of pure exploitation like Europe and the US did for centuries.
But back to topic: You talk about ‘them’ like they are kids who can’t think for themselves. The way the US media covered the San Francisco problem like it is a rat infestation is shocking for me as European. We talking about people here right?. Lets not forget the 2008 crash were lots of hard working families lost their homes and retirement provisions overnight. This shit didn’t happend in Europe at that time, even tho a lot of people lost their retirement provisions as well. Why it didn’t happend? Cause we have working safety net here.
Not to mention what the aftermath of the corona crisis will bring. I’m just glad living in Europe right now. One thing is sure tho, 3D printed homes are not the solution to a problem that goes so much deeper.
This reminds me of a weekly challange entrie by a user called Millani pretty much sums it up:
The west coast homeless problem does indeed trace back to policies, but capitalism did not play that much of a role.
Rather, the major west coast states and cities are known for things like extortion-level taxation (which greatly reduces disposable income), suffocating regulations and forced ‘living wages’ (which make it very difficult for small businesses to make money), incredibly stringent building codes (which derail housing projects), urban growth boundaries (which prevents construction of new housing), strict renewable energy and “green” laws (which cause electric bills and fuel prices to skyrocket), generous aid and welfare laws that attract homeless from other states, ect…
I beg to differ. Thinking of the 1920 stock market crash as well as the housing bubble in 2008, all leads back to deregulation in conjunction with an unleashed predatory capitalism that knows no boundaries. Its no secret and well documented that guys like John D. Rockefeller profited greatly from the 1920 crash. Money does not just vanish, it ends up in someones pocket, allways.
Hello! West coast urban resident here. The threat of homelessness is what allows landlords to extract extortionate rents. So not only is homelessness a symptom of capitalism, it is what reinforces the relation to begin with. People become homeless when the landlord raises their rent and they don’t take no for an answer. And those stringent building regulations are probably the only thing keeping developers from bulldozing homes with the residents still inside.
As someone who lives in Kansas, you should not presume to speak for major west coast states areas any more than I would presume to speak for tornadoes
So in the absence of strict regulation and top-down command and control policies from the state, do you actually think the average developer (or business owner) will just start killing people to take their money (because loosening regulation at both the state and federal level in much of the country has not led to this anywhere at the moment)?
Landlords might need to raise rents because of skyrocketing land prices and the rising cost of keeping up with regulations (for instance, the prices of California homes set to soar because of mandatory solar installations). Landlords and business owners shouldn’t be cast as scapegoats when over-regulation and/or state interference in the market creates a problem.
