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 CptJake wrote:

He adds that 3D printing will encourage governments to build affordable homes because of savings in time and cost.

I personally do not see that as a government function and don't want to have to fork out tax dollars to support it. Other folks will obviously feel differently.

To be fair: This is how you feel about everything one could possibly conceive of a government doing.

 Sigvatr wrote:
So...in order to get jobless people houses, you want tens of thousands of people to lose their job? Sounds right.

Technological advances of any kind in our current state of being is going to leave tens of thousands of people jobless. We've got futuristic technology while doing things in the traditional style.


Those two things cannot exist together.

Yes, but the advantages often outweigh the disadvantages. Tons of people losing jobs for...jobless getting homes is highly irrational. It would make sense if you could reliably create e.g. vehicles with 3D printers.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Yes, but the advantages often outweigh the disadvantages. Tons of people losing jobs for...jobless getting homes is highly irrational. It would make sense if you could reliably create e.g. vehicles with 3D printers.

http://mashable.com/2014/09/16/first-3d-printed-car/


People say every technological advance will leave people jobless. I dunno if that's really any different here.

Slight digression but related:

You also have medical research groups not wanting to share info with each other because they can't agree on attribution (I.e. Who gets the credit and profit). If they did, a lot of issues might already have been solved.

Then you have drug companies that are in the same boat; in addition to pushing remedies instead of prevention or cures.

Then you have gas companies pushing reliance on oil instead of other tech.

Then you have governments that intentionally limit progress in order to maintain control.

And so on and so forth.... It's not a technology issue. It's a people and power issue.

Actually that is literally a Luddite attitude.
Technology will render some occupations obsolete and effect employment. It will provide work in other fields.
One can apply a protectionist approach, but would fall behind times if the technological changes offer an economic advantage, as the Luddites found.

Now in the case of 3d printing, it is already threatening livelihoods, but opening up other opportunities. 3d printed architecture is however not going to replace traditional build,
building regulations are slow to change, and would requir extensive testing.

In the UK for example the Government, RIBA, Surveryors andlocal plannig will be reluctant to even permit 3d housing until extensive materials and safety tests are confirmed.

How much stress will a 3d printed wall take, how does it hold up to climate, water erosion, fire, impact, being drilled into or just time. Planning authorities will need to have guarantees that a 3d printed house wont melt disintegrate or otherwise become unsafe in six months or thirty years.
A lot of the safety data just isn't available yet, some of the materials technologies, which the Chinese stole allegedly, have not been tested over time.

A 3d printed structural wall of materials of untested composition is to the point of view of a planning surveyor a problem waiting to happen. So in the west we wont be moving on this technology for legal reasons for five years minimum, most likely ten. This will give time for the industry to adjust and does not as yet take into account political lethargy, corruption, protectionism and other matters which might slow down legislation, only honest safety assessments.

3d printing is coming, and should not be ignored, but it isn't a magick wand of conjuration, not yet anyway.

It all depends on the materials used honestly. I have no idea what kind of mixture they used, but ABS is a hard enough commercially available plastic that is incredibly durable to most anything (It's the stuff the 3D printed car was made of, if that's any indication.)

 Chongara wrote:
To be fair: This is how you feel about everything one could possibly conceive of a government doing.

I'm sure we could find support for a 3D printer that, when fed tax dollars, printed aircraft carriers.

 Ouze wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
To be fair: This is how you feel about everything one could possibly conceive of a government doing.

I'm sure we could find support for a 3D printer that, when fed tax dollars, printed aircraft carriers.

We'll need those by the time the tech comes around to protect us from the insurgents we 3D printed guns for the decade prior. Makes sense.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Damnit people, stop doing cool things with 3D printers before I get mine. I wanna be able to innovate too!

This isn't a 3d printed house.

That company just tacked that name onto their building process to cash in on the hype.

The real name of the technique is Contour Crafting.

Using myself as an example, because I know me...
Just because you build more houses, doesn't mean I will get to live in them.
I don't think that's the problem, the problem is the vanishing job market with nothing to replace them.
I would never be able to afford a house, just because they find ways to build them faster and cheaper (for them) doesn't mean it will solve any problems.

 Slarg232 wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
So...in order to get jobless people houses, you want tens of thousands of people to lose their job? Sounds right.

Technological advances of any kind in our current state of being is going to leave tens of thousands of people jobless. We've got futuristic technology while doing things in the traditional style.


Those two things cannot exist together.

Printed cheap houses fit right in. Since no one will have jobs as we automate the vast majority of labor out of work, we need an efficient and inexpensive way to house the jobless laborers, therefore we need more of these printable houses not less.

 Easy E wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
So...in order to get jobless people houses, you want tens of thousands of people to lose their job? Sounds right.

Technological advances of any kind in our current state of being is going to leave tens of thousands of people jobless. We've got futuristic technology while doing things in the traditional style.


Those two things cannot exist together.

Printed cheap houses fit right in. Since no one will have jobs as we automate the vast majority of labor out of work, we need an efficient and inexpensive way to house the jobless laborers, therefore we need more of these printable houses not less.

Personally, I wanna see us spend more money/labor on the Space Race. I'm still really upset at myself for not being able to go into Mars One :/


If nothing else, we can use the people put out of jobs from making houses for the poor into feeding the poor. Soylent Green is cheap and easy to make

An objection to this technology would be that it economically damages already poor countries by forcing builders out of work. In much the same way as clothes donations force out local textiles manufacturers, technologies that appear a good idea for third world nations just end up helping to trap them in their current state.

Yknow there are several camps on sociological thought that said countries cannot develop or modernize without first going through an industrial revolution themselves. And that introducing modern technology and infrastructures to underdeveloped countries is likely to end badly and worse.

 Slarg232 wrote:
It all depends on the materials used honestly. I have no idea what kind of mixture they used, but ABS is a hard enough commercially available plastic that is incredibly durable to most anything (It's the stuff the 3D printed car was made of, if that's any indication.)

But wait, thats Big Oil making money. Thats wrong.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yknow there are several camps on sociological thought that said countries cannot develop or modernize without first going through an industrial revolution themselves. And that introducing modern technology and infrastructures to underdeveloped countries is likely to end badly and worse.

Are you sure this is sociology? Are you sure it's not the prime directive from Star Trek?

 Ouze wrote:

Are you sure this is sociology? Are you sure it's not the prime directive from Star Trek?

Are you sure that's not where sociologists got it from?

 Ouze wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yknow there are several camps on sociological thought that said countries cannot develop or modernize without first going through an industrial revolution themselves. And that introducing modern technology and infrastructures to underdeveloped countries is likely to end badly and worse.

Are you sure this is sociology? Are you sure it's not the prime directive from Star Trek?

yes IM sure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yknow there are several camps on sociological thought that said countries cannot develop or modernize without first going through an industrial revolution themselves. And that introducing modern technology and infrastructures to underdeveloped countries is likely to end badly and worse.

Are you sure this is sociology? Are you sure it's not the prime directive from Star Trek?

yes IM sure.

 Steve steveson wrote:
I think producing good quality, well designed housing is a valid concern. There is plenty of evidence to show that poorly designed housing becomes slums and sink estates and does little . Housing that is well designed, creates good communities and works well enriches lives. Poor housing just makes the problem look better for 10 years until the rot sets in. Just look at what happened with the slum clearances in the 1930's. By the 1960s the tower blocks and garden cities were turning in to sink estates. We are seeing the same today with many social developments of the 90's and later.

I'm not so sure it's actually bad design that killed off the tower blocks/sink estates (although poor build quality would not have helped)

it is more a mixture of lack of opportunities for the second generation occupants leading to unemployment & lack of hope which means no maintenance of the houses, vandalism, petty crime and general social decay, added to large areas of houses with no shops/entertainment facility's as these steadily closed down with the rise of big supermarkets which makes things worse

plus some of those rehoused in them were just plain bad news and would have taken down wherever they ended up

Cheap new housing (even if it was relatively poor quality) could be a big help (as long as the state/owners could afford to maintain or replace them as the needed to)

 Sigvatr wrote:
So...in order to get jobless people houses, you want tens of thousands of people to lose their job? Sounds right.

You're confusing two different arguments. The main value of this technology is not for developed countries, where it would only provide similar quality to existing mass-produced housing just cheaper, it's in the developing world where "slum housing" doesn't mean your landlord taking a few weeks to fix your leaky tap, it means squalor, disease, lack of basic amenities, and dangerously unsafe structures. The discussion on the value of social housing in developed countries is a more general point.

As for your point; automation isn't going to go away. One day we're going to have to deal with a reality in which most physical labour can be accomplished by machines, at which point capitalism ceases to function, and getting there will be a difficult road for a lot of people since I very much doubt the people who benefit most from the capitalist paradigm are going to want to acknowledge that coming reality until they have no other choice. Unless we're going to become a society of Luddites, we can't avoid this kind of problem, and at the end of the day losing a few tens of thousands of jobs in wealthy developed nations that can afford to support the jobless through unemployment and retraining(providing they're not being run by aforementioned "fiscal conservatives" of course) is an entirely worthwhile tradeoff for improving and in some cases saving billions of lives all around the world.

It really has no use in developed countries either. housing can be cheap, it can be as simple as four brick walls and a roof.
Build them a better house and the fact they are poor won't go away

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
It really has no use in developed countries either. housing can be cheap, it can be as simple as four brick walls and a roof.
Build them a better house and the fact they are poor won't go away

Well, not really on either count. Good quality(not lavish, just solidly built and well insulated) housing isn't all that cheap, and one of the biggest costs associated with housebuilding is labour, so a technology that drastically reduces labour costs brings quality housing into the kind of pricerange that makes it feasible for the state to produce it on a mass scale. As for "the fact that they are poor"; you talk like it's an innate character trait, poverty is about lack of resources to cover necessary expenditure, rent/mortgage costs are perhaps the biggest single necessary expenditure and so alleviating people of that burden with social housing increases the amount of resources they have available for other things. Besides which, you're still coming at this from the wrong angle; unless you want to live in a society that just exterminates "undesirables", dealing with the issues that arise from poverty isn't a choice, it has to be done, so the only question is what is the most effective and cost-effective way to do that. Even if social housing doesn't "solve" poverty(nothing can, it's an innate quality of scarcity-based economic systems like capitalism), it makes poverty less costly to society, both in terms of the financial burden borne by the state and in terms of social costs like crime rate.

Look at Housing First; Utah had a serious homeless problem, so they implemented a Housing First-style system and simply gave homes to the homeless. Since 2005 they've reduced the number of homeless people in Utah by more than 70%, and it saves an average of $4000-odd per previously-homeless person compared to the previous "solution" of trying to ignore the issue and paying for ER visits, police time, and halfway houses. Now consider the potential long-term savings if we were to replace housing benefits for the disabled, unemployed and those on low incomes with such a scheme, given that this technology could allow the homes to be built at half their present cost - the initial outlay would still be large, yes, but considered over time the cost would be far lower as you're no longer pumping public money into the demand-driven private rental market, paying for B&B/shelter stays during transitional periods, or dealing with the additional medical and policing costs generated as a result of people "falling through the cracks" of a means-tested benefit.

It seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but often the fiscally responsible thing to do is spend public money, and do so in ways that seem "unfair", because in the long run spending money in the right ways isn't government largesse, but an investment that pays for itself by reducing costs elsewhere. Another case in point would be the Basic Income; the idea of just providing every citizen of a country with "free money" every month for their entire life sounds(or rather, can be made to sound) like a grotesque waste of public money, totally unfair to "hardworking families"(feel free to substitute your local tabloids' buzzwords of choice) etc, but in reality can be mostly paid for out of existing social security budgets simply by virtue of the fact it doesn't require a vast, clunking, inefficient bureaucratic apparatus to administer the rigid means-testing which neoliberal wisdom would tell us - despite all evidence to the contrary - is the way to save money; and where at first glance it appears to be a disincentive to work, when looked at on the scale of a whole populace it is actually the reverse since the current means-tested social security system disincentivises people from working as their payments decrease at the same or often greater rate than their new earned income can compensate for, meaning anything other than full-time contracted employment isn't worth pursuing, and while people with the option to do so generally decrease their total hours worked by around 5% on average, on the scale of the whole economy that's more than made up for by the increased economic activity from SMEs(people can be more entrepreneurial when they don't have to worry that a single misstep could result in penury), people previously in receipt of benefits taking up part-time positions that are now worthwhile, and the general increases in innovation and productivity which have been repeatedly demonstrated to result from employees who're no longer overworked.