[alnwlsn]

The maker movement probably is a failure if you're an economist. Nothing could be worse for the economy than people buying less domestic products in favor making their own stuff, and sending more of their paychecks to China to get more cheap circuit boards, machines, and components.

And of course I'm not going to be setting up a "mini factory", I don't feel like it and I already got the one thing I made that I wanted, which almost certainly would never have been profitable for anyone to make at quantity in the first place. In the unlikely event someone does want one, they can just make their own following the same process as above.

[peteforde]

If this is how an us vs them scenario is being framed, you're making a very strong case for the team I've chosen.

It sounds like you're describing winners and losers, but it's shaky ground when you realize many people simply aren't motivated to think like an economist.

Given the choice between spending my life doing interesting things and accumulating wealth, I'm quite comfortable knowing how I'll look back on things from the end.

BTW: you say "of course you're not going to be setting up a mini factory" to someone who quite literally has a mini factory in their house. I'm on Hacker News to hang out with other people who think that's awesome, not some misaligned economic philosophy.

[switchbak]

And the entirety of OSS is hand waved away as an externality, but clearly there's something very powerful about all the sharing of models and knowledge going on that doesn't seem to be captured by traditional economic models (that I'm aware of).