[p2p-research] CAD files at The PIrate Bay? (Follow up)

[Samuel Rose]

Hey Kevin,

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Kevin Carson
<free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/22/09, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  The problem, as Kevin mentions, is that this route (low cost rapid
>>  prototyping to capitalized patented products) requires small producers
>>  to partner with more traditional companies who are better funded to be
>>  their "facilitators".  Kevin is right that this way of bringing
>>  products to market requires lots of capitalization for both the
>>  patenting process and the transfer of design from prototype to product
>>  (plus the marketing that most of these firms believe is needed, etc
>>  etc). This model will be somewhat pervasive as distributed
>>  manufacturing emerges. There could even likely be a bubble emerging
>>  around more traditional firms "sourcing" emerging garage
>>  manufacturers.  These companies see each other doing this, and see the
>>  short term advantage, and are already starting to tap into what they
>>  see as a shortcut resource. Yet, ultimately,  since it requires so
>>  many resources, it will collapse or diminish.
>
> Actually, I believe the traditional model is on the way out; garage
> manufacturing will expand at the expense of big companies.  But for
> small companies serving local markets with a lot of lean product lines
> organized on a JIT basis, the cost of patents won't be worth it.  The
> whole idea is expensive patenting, followed by large-batch production
> to service the overhead, is becoming irrelevant to ever-larger
> sections of the economy.
>
> Re the bubble of partnerships between traditional manufacturing corps
> and outsourced garage producers, that's a major theme of Doctorow's
> Makers, which I'm in process of reviewing.  The interesting thing,
> though, is that the micromanufacturing bubble in his scenario popped
> much more catastrophically than the dotcom bubble.  The reason was
> that with entry costs as low as they were, it became harder and harder
> to reap entrepreneurial profits from the first mover advantage and
> then get out before widespread adoption drove costs down.  The
> periods of entrepreneurial rent became shorter and shorter, until
> entrepreneurs were overtaken by a shock wave of competiitive cost
> implosion--every favela and shantytown in the country had its own Fab
> Lab operating out of a store front or garage.
>




This partnership stuff is actually happening now, and I am starting to
develop alternative models where independents work as a team in
coworking spaces (or other similar spaces) to fully develop
technologies for localized use. Makers are part of the teams (which
can be ad-hoc) and stand to be reciprocated more out of this
arrangement than being an outsourcing resource for larger companies.

This means that the other people in the local economies "team" need to
fill the role of researching emerging markets, design, connecting with
local stakeholders, raising needed resources, project management,
coordination of iterative development, managing the digital resources
etc

The above is not so much as projection of the landscape of garage
manufacturing trends, as an actual model that we are applying here in
midwest region to local economies. So, I am both "making" myself, plus
looking to work with "makers" in this region, and focusing on Urban
Agriculture, "green" energy, automation systems, and general rapid
prototyping fabrication capabilities


>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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-- 
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Sam Rose
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