For those in the first world, part of their economy might become alternative, but those home producers are usually still reliant at least the “part-time wage earner” that represents much more than the income of many families in the third world.

The idea of the freedom of owning a property outright, having no mortgage payment, first requires capital —- not on a corporate scale, but certainly a good few decades of work for corporations. Second, this situation rarely enables true self-sufficiency, except in cases where the owner is happy to return to a particularly rural, pre-industrial revolution lifestyle. Simply consider present-day food basics such as bread, or pasta, and consider how many individual home owners, or even co-op communities could produce these in significant quantities without large capital infrastructure.

On efficiencies, large capital production and alternative economy production calculate efficiencies in different ways, making both optimally efficient (at least on short-term scales of capital boom/bust cycles), but in incomparable ways. For large capital, the efficiencies are often from minimising salaries, or other “liabilities”, making massive scale, automated agriculture is “efficient” (for them), whereas the efficiency of small production is variety of produce per unit of land and other inputs. However consider the burgeoning niche sector of small, organic, sustainable farming practices and you will still see a great reliance on capital investment at every point in production, from the purchase of land, equipment and transport for inputs and outputs.

If you consider the idea of “hacking capitalism”, it is clear it still requires capitalism to exist and remain profitable, pretty much requiring the “hacked” economy to be only a niche fraction of the mainstream economy.
For instance, the simple use of “google” to learn how to circumvent planned obsolescence requires google to be available, (along with the massive physical infrastructure it entails as well as that required to deliver it to the hacker). This is not a viable, sustainable alternative without the existence of the former system, or a highly concerted, attempt to amass and preserve the present excess output of technology, books, materials for as long as possible, while inevitably retreating from the present idea of technological advancement as the stockpiled goods deteriorate and are depleted.

The idea of home fabs may also seem possible in the first world, to people who have made some savings (amassed some capital of their own) somewhere to enable their home-tinkering, however if we only consider the petrochemical products used in any such endeavour, we see how much capital-intensive infrastructure they rely on. And that’s before we even look at their transport needs. How few cities in usa could actually function without (electric or oil) powered vehicular transport? Most are not even particularly walkable.

I understand the allure of the whole argument, and i think each of the component ideas have something to them. But as a collective argument for an alternative economy “singularity”, i find this essay to be full of holes. Such a singularity would not have computers for any great length of time (before they broke down and required parts that the community could not produce). The same goes for many other components of living, down to the fabric of houses. The only such singularity that might be realistic is a return to older ways of living.

I think a more realistic, achievable outcome is a kind of extended long-tail of capitalistic production, where the masses living in the alternative income tail is able to live with greater fiscal distance from credit sources. However they would not be divorced from the capitalistic system entirely.

Another alternative would be to work towards (hope for!?) an alternative system of capital that does not rely on interest and credit at its root. See Rushkoff’s Life Inc. for more on this idea.

I’m not into Singularity, but not entirely ruling it out either. The homebrew industrial revolution, as you describe it, is reminiscent of Vernor Vinge’s ‘tinkers.’ And what do you make of this?