3D Printed Gun, Robots, and the future of food pricing

Recently there's been a company based here in Austin Texas called Defense Distributed, which has been garnering a lot of attention. This is due to the fact that first, they developed a 3D printed magazine for an AR15. Then the decided to develop 3D printed versions of portions of the gun itself. These parts are being printed in plastic, so it seems unlikely that a plastic gun would work right? Well, the lower receiver for the AR15 can survive shooting 600 rounds. That's a big deal. The first version was able to shoot one, the second only 7. As of yesterday they released a fully printable handgun. Due to restrictions in the US gun code a gun must have a certain minimum weight of metal to be detectable by metal detectors (125g). I think that this will have major ramifications - I'm not even talking about gun rights, or gun ownership or gun whatever. I'll discuss those in a later post. Below is a video of the "Liberator" in action.

How is this a big deal in other ways than just Gun rights? Well, several months ago a book came out called "Race Against the Machine" which argues that we need to figure out how to work with robots and computers in an effective way to maximize the returns for both workers and for the owners of the computer/robots. One of these robots they discuss is a $25k robot called Baxter. This robot is extremely easy to program and control. It offers a lot of the capabilities that a low skill employee could offer and more than many expensive robots. In fact we're seeing this in re-shoring efforts from companies like Tesla and Apple. They won't be bringing back the old school manufacturing jobs. There will only be technician jobs related to fixing broken equipment, which will be significantly fewer jobs. Even if Baxter only lasts 3 years, it more than paid for itself in being able to operate for 24/7 for 25k in total rather than paying four people more than that each year.

Add in the capability for people to download  designs for guns and many other things from Thingiverse which can be printed from home and how cheap it is to send designs to companies like Shapeways - where you can print in metal, these changes are going to radically change our current manufacturing infrastructure and distribution system. We aren't prepared for this and it's going to reduce the number of low end jobs in existence.

Which brings me to the next point. Food prices are high. When people can't feed themselves there are riots and revolts. We've seen this twice already in the past 5 years and we're poised for more violence by August of this year. According to a study published two years ago food prices are near the threshold level of the Arab Spring. If these prices are still as high as predicted then we could see some serious issues in the next few years unless we radically begin rethinking our economic models.

We'll be seeing massive disruption and opportunities in the manufacturing space. This will likely have massive ramifications on our supply chain, which has huge numbers of employees. The ability to print your own cheap plastic products could impact toy sales and the retail industry.

Is this bound to happen, no, certainly not. However, 3D Printers are now available for sale at Staples for $1,300 prebuilt, they've come pretty close to mainstream. The next step are going to be more advanced printers that are able to print faster, cool faster, print more complex designs with less structure, and eventually we might be able to print metal products on a printer that costs $1300. A lot of people won't want to do this, but there will be enough where it could have a serious impact on the economy.

What do you think? Am I overreacting?

Colorado, guns and society

Horrible tragedy has struck Colorado. We still don't understand what caused this man to do this. This is also the second piece on mass killings and guns that I've written in the past year, the Norway tragedy was only a year ago. There was some discussion after that about the ease of access of weapons in the US, but with the alleged gunman in Colorado using an AR-15 there most certainly will be discussions of re-instating the assault rifle ban that lapsed early in the Obama administration.

Let's first take a look at some of the history of the US before moving onto anything else. The Right to Bear Arms comes from the bill of rights amended to the constitution of the United States. The reason the founding fathers created these rights stems from the injustices the colonies experienced under British rule. Preventing gun ownership caused hardships for the colonists as they were fighting with the Indians, protecting their live stock and hunting for food. Distances were much greater at the time, so you needed to be able to fend for yourselves. The founding fathers also were revolutionaries, obviously, as they had just overthrown Britain. Jefferson, in particular felt that the citizens had the right to overthrow their own government. The ability to overthrow the government is predicated on the ability to fight against the government. The right to bear arms is paramount to this capability, hence it is an essential right in our Constitution.


A lot has changed in the past 200+ years. Weapons technology is at a level that our founding fathers never imagined. Our explosives are smaller and more powerful than theirs. The sheer number of people would be mind boogling to them, as we have stadiums that can hold more people than all the population of Philly in 1776 and Houston has nearly as many people in the city as all of the 13 colonies did in 1776. The amount of damage we can inflict and the number of people that can be impacted as exponentially increased.


What has not kept up with our ability to kill and our population are our institutions. Organizations like the NRA push for looser and looser gun laws as they feel that is an unalienable right. However, they do not take on issues that lead to increases in gun violence such as prohibition of drugs (increases violence) or mental health concerns. In the United States we look at mental health issues as something to be kept quiet and to have a mental disease is to be stigmatized. These prevent people that require help from seeking the help that they need. Plus, the cost of mental health care is extremely expensive. In many cases insurance companies don't want to pay for the cost of seeing a psychiatrist or will limit the amount of treatment a person can receive. Addressing the actual problem will do more for protecting gun ownership rights than any glib quote such as "You can take my gun from my cold dead hands" we need to understand the underlying root cause of the massacre and fix that. 


The other concern that we should all have in regard to controlling weaponry is the importance of having access to weapons when overthrowing a dictator. In the past 2 years we've seen many types of revolutions. Ranging from the completely peaceful to the extremely violent in Libya and Syria. In each country access to foreign weapons are making the difference for the rebels, but for the rebels to even reach the point where the international community stepped in to help them, required weapons to start the civil war. Whether we like it or not, that is the reason why the founders included the right to bear arms in our constitution. 


What we need to do as a society is to look at where our values stand. Do we feel that we should treat addiction like a crime, or like a mental health epidemic? The need for gun ownership can drop once drug issues can be dealt within our legal system instead of requiring extralegal remedies, such as killing the person that is taking your turf. Looking at how we deal with bullying and other mental health issues can prevent another Columbine or Aurora from happening again. I'm going to close this post with an interview with Marilyn Manson in Bowling for Columbine. Regardless of what you think about the man himself, or his shock rock, he is an extremely articulate speaker and asks us to look in the mirror when these tragedies happen. Our society causes them, our society can fix them.