Hey, thanks for the great reply! Sounds like you are absolutely picking up what I’m putting down, which is awesome because sometimes I forget to mention that I’m, in a way, working from the end goal backwards, so sometimes concepts can be a little on the vague side since the details haven’t been fully worked out yet, which is why I love your reply. Now to tackle your points:

(1) I would say even in the long term that we’d still be dependent on a large repository of available designs, however, these will not be provided via some tech brothel bent on being some end-all-be-all of what you use. Instead, they will be refined designs that have been continuously improved upon by the community at large. Likely at this point, waste will be minimized and functionality will be focused. I know not everyone will want to use the same thing, or have the same design, so I’m thinking there could easily exist a base model that gets the job done, but designed with customization in mind so that later down the road you can add in a different colored insert, or a different handle configuration. Whatever might suit you best, but likely won’t need to make every model to try what’s best. Which does lead me to your second point:

(2) I also share the concern with personal overproduction, and there needs to be a way to ensure that people don’t go ham with trying to print every single option for simply no other reason then because they can. The best way, so far, that I’ve come up with combatting this is by making everyone responsible for providing their own base material for the design. Kind of like in an RPG where you need to somehow acquire the base materials to craft an item, I envision a similar system. Which at this point I should point out that I’m approaching this from a post-monetary society, and I know not everyone agrees that can happen, but it would keep people from just buying and hoarding resources. Instead there are a myriad of other ways where materials can be acquired, either through getting it yourself, asking for help, recycling old parts, collective agreement with others, etc., but that should effectively help limit overproduction as people will tend to be more careful with how they “spend” their resources. (Post point, with some exotic material, it can safely be assumed that we’ve extracted enough from the Earth that recycling can be the way from there. Otherwise, modifications will have to be made to designs in order to live within the constraints)

(3) I hadn’t really fleshed out this point, but agree 100% with where you are taking it. I don’t think we’ll be able to escape our dependence on electricity generation, at least not with my current understanding of physics, so we’ll still need ways to create and store electricity for the world. Anything we can do to help supply chains be more self sufficient is a step in the right direction. I know there is some concern that we can’t always wait for a part to be printed, but if it’s mission critical and people are half competent at planning, there will be spares available for backup.

I really wish there was some consequence for overproduction, and I agree that corp interests are far too entrenched in politics to get anything like that done short term. It’s frustrating, and I don’t think governments would help anyways. Production creates jobs, and more jobs = a better economy (or so the theory goes) so it suits them to side with the corporations (until the shit hits the fan anyways). I’m hoping through individual empowerment we can eventually suck enough power away to start making some real changes.

Anyways, loved the thoughts you put out and feel free to refute anything I put out if it seems off point. As much as I’d like to be a subject matter expert in everything, I’m not!