The Economic Disruption caused by Nanotechnology
Today, when buying a product, much of the cost is created by the labour that went into the manufacturing, transportation and sale of it. When molecular manufacturing becomes common and popular, this effort will become unnecessary. Products will become very cheap, but a large amount of jobs will be lost, and many people would become unemployed.
Timmy Loses Everything
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Why Would People Lose Their Jobs?
Nanotechnology would make people lose their jobs as better products could be produced without them. Creating products using molecular manufacturing instead of old products would eventually cause people to become unemployed as they would become uneccessary. These nanoproducts would be better in nearly every single way. The would be built to absolute perfection, down to the molecular level they would be flawless, and the would also be cheaper to build, and require no human labour whatsoever, which is the crux of the issue. People would lose their jobs as nanomachines that create products will very quickly take over all the demand. They will be cheaper and better than any other product. First, the workers that used to be required to build the products would be fired, as they were no longer needed. And then slowly any other company that did not use nanotechnology in their manufacturing process would go out of business, and everyone in the company would lose their job.
Would This Future Really be so Bad?
In many utopian views of the future, a perfect society is one that does not require people to do work. This is similar to what would happen with the progression of nanotechnology, but there is an important difference, nanotechnology would not take over all jobs, just many of them. Jobs in politics, medicine and economics, to name a few, could not be done by nanotechnology at first and would still be required, but there would be nowhere near enough jobs for everyone, and many would be left unemployed, with no income. This raises serious questions about post-nanotech economy. What would people do to make money? Would capitalism disappear? Human capital would become nearly worthless, completely disrupting the economic structure. Despite post-capitalist utopian hopes, it is uncertain whether a replacement system can be implemented in time to prevent the consequences of massive job displacement.