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By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted September 19, 2011 at 21:22:48 in reply to Comment 69851
That, my friend, is the second wall. The point at which most goods produced by this system can again be produced cheaper and more effectively by most people than they can purchase them. The incredible drop in quality of our goods over the last fifty years has led to a point where most kids could learn to do as well with a few tries. This isn't an accident - it's a direct product of how these factories work. The designs have to be simple enough for children off the streets of rural third world nations to build, because in a great many cases that's exactly who's building them. Especially at Wal Mart.
Trying to work this out in numbers would take a lot of data about average wages, prices, and production styles, but I'd bet that this point fell around the 90s for most goods (other than microchips, etc). It isn't that we can beat the import prices, but once it hits the shop floor with all the associated first-world markups (profits, wages, advertising, land etc) they're nowhere near as cheap. If they carry brand names, they're often as expensive as well-built local versions.
On the other hand, one need only visit Instructables to see what people are capable of in their garages these days.
"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford
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