Greg Beato on the 3D Economy

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Pedro Moura Pinheiro / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

In almost all visions of the 3D printed future, manufacturing changes dramatically. If a high-end 3D printer can fabricate a pistol or a panini press on demand, why bother with huge production runs, global distribution networks, warehoused inventories, and the cheap human labor that only under-regulated developing nations can provide? Greg Beato warns that once the retail and manufacturing carnage starts to scale, the government carnage will soon follow.