Xiangshan truly believes that additive manufacturing/3D printing can change the landscape of human industry.
The human industrial structure will inevitably move towards "agglomeration", and monopoly will be very easy to appear. The reason is because of "mass production".
The benefits of mass production are simply too great.
When human resources, capital, information, technology, and economic entities gather in a region, they can produce the special effect of "1 1 > 2". Due to the expansion of the scale of the production organization, all production lines can share the technology provided by one R&D organization
, which evens out R&D costs. It can also lower prices when purchasing materials on a large scale.
All in all, there are many benefits.
Of course, there is another point - a large number of manpower can realize the specialization and division of labor of personnel and improve efficiency, so the cost is also reduced.
Adam Smith completed the study of "division of labor" in economics, and the mathematician Charles Babbage further developed it. Finally, in the hands of Henry Ford, the "God of the Brave New World", this system
The system evolved into its final form - the assembly line.
Babbage proposed from a scientific perspective that division of labor can reduce the skills mastered by each worker. This saves workers the time to learn new skills, saves the consumption of employees' learning process, and saves the time of switching from one process to another.
, and saves the time required to change tools. In this way, a worker only needs to repeat simple labor to quickly improve the proficiency of labor skills.
But Mr. Babbage may not have expected how Henry Ford would implement this theory.
The big capitalist Ford divided the production of the Model T into a total of 7,882 different processes. Among them, 949 required "strong, well-conditioned male workers" and 3,338 required "general manual workers"; other processes can be performed by "women"
or an older boy" to complete; also, "workers without legs can do 670 of the processes, workers with one leg can do 2637, people without hands can do 2, and people with one hand can do 715
Tao, a blind person can do 10 Tao."
Ah, of course, there is one more thing that should not be forgotten.
Mr. Babbage was an expert in mechanics. Before the electrical age, the mathematician was planning to create "machines that could calculate" and "machines that could operate automatically."
Therefore, Babbage also made a very important point - since the tasks of a single worker have become simpler, "after the division of labor, it is easier to design more sophisticated and practical tools and machines, thereby increasing labor productivity."
It is not that machines caused mass production, but because humans discovered that "mass production" is very easy to profit from, so they designed industrial machines according to the requirements of mass production.
Everything in the modern factory system revolves around the theme of "mass production." Henry Ford's disciples and descendants practiced Babbage's theory in the most cruel way.
Even this form of labor will completely destroy the value of workers.
The worker does not need to know what he is doing, he only needs to rely on muscle memory to work repeatedly. Therefore, it is difficult for him to realize the meaning of his work. This is simply killing the worker's enthusiasm for work and cutting off the growth channels of his labor skills.
.
Until a machine completely replaces the worker's job.
Xiangshan thinks so.
Therefore, although he felt that Yawgmoth's argument process was a bit jumpy, the concept of "machines should be publicly owned" was really eye-catching.
People should not exploit people, but people can exploit machines. Produced by machines and enjoyed by people - this is the most possible "beautiful future" in imagination. Machines liberate people from heavy repetitive labor.
After coming out, human beings can use learning to improve themselves, express themselves through creation, and maintain themselves through entertainment.
Of course, the premise of all this must be that "everyone can obtain the things produced by machines" and that "the goals of machine production must be grasped by the public."
But this is not easy, because as long as the "scale effect" remains, industrial agglomeration, totalitarianism, monopoly, overproduction, and major crises will inevitably be created continuously.
Xiangshan believes that as long as "centralized production" still has advantages, those problems are inevitable.
However, 3D printing does have some such potential.
Production lines are all specialized. A production line that produces screws may not be able to produce nuts. Because the materials, molds, lathes, etc. required for the two products are different. If a production line produces both screws and nuts, it must be switched.
While producing products, switch part of the production equipment.
At this time, it is better to build two production lines.
Therefore, materials are often transported from the smelting plant to production lines in different places, and then transported to the destination through various complex logistics.
But 3D printing is different. If the technology is more mature, it should be able to manufacture anything from metal roughly processed by small smelting equipment.
For 3D printing, the cost of production is only model data, raw materials and smelting costs. It does not include molds, machines and material losses. After rough processing, the ore does not need to flow to the processing plant, but can be shipped directly to the consumer.
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At this moment, Xiangshan firmly believes that 3D printing technology can completely change the industrial landscape.
Because this is not a technology designed "for centralized production".
If combined with technologies such as automatic assembly...
If Ford is the god of capitalism and the assembly line symbolizes the glory of capitalist mass production, then maybe additive construction is a technology more suitable for the "kingdom of freedom".
Xiangshan thinks so sincerely.
Of course, Xiangshan originally did not think that he could shake the existing system in his lifetime. Because the current industry is completely based on assembly line industry.
His ambition is actually equivalent to reopening a completely different technology tree.
However, opposite to this new technology tree is a technology tree that has already monopolized all resources.
Xiangshan didn't think he could succeed.
However, with the arrival of Ogun, things changed a little bit.
The "Orunmila Project" shows an "additive construction" technology tree.
It is certain that aliens have mastered similar technologies and used them in the aerospace industry.
This is a signal.
Xiang Shan felt that maybe he should work harder.
No matter what direction he takes, he must find his allies in the academic world - friends who are willing to help him implement this ideal.
At this moment, Xiangshan felt that Yawgmoth Voigt was a very good person.