Nathan Cravens has launched an Open Manufacturing discussion group.

Here are some details about his personal motivation:

“Over a year ago I formulated the concept of Effortless Economy to describe and observe the particular trends of ‘zero-point competition,’ a particular evolutionary activity I first sensed, then witnessed all around me as I began to look, namely at the things made closer and closer to zero financial cost most prominently observed in the computer hardware industry and software industry, but also observable in the labor markets of the United States, where wages have stagnated at best for the past few decades followed by a majority that began tumbling into debt sometime in the early 1990s. Its not simple retail workers getting jipped by self checkout kiosks either, labor stats show that in the early ’10s management positions, a white collar position, was in decline next in line with factory work. (Neil Baily, Martin. Z. Lawrence, Robert. What Happened to the Great US Job Machine?) Stephen Baker’s The Numerati offers a telling story of the Taylorization and automation of the service and information economies, the last of the foreseeable labor markets.

These sorts of observable trends seem to strongly suggest that, once I found a term for it, Effortless Economy was nearly inevitable. I usually refer to Effortless Economy as an economic system that does not require a workforce. An EE would be just a skip and a jig away from a post-scarcity society, where all resources are created from a minimal amount of physical resources. I don’t believe an absolute post- scarcity environment can exist, not unless we can somehow create something out of the vacuum of nothingness. Placing the philosopher’s crown upon my head, I don’t deny that possibility, but I do my best to align with ‘scientific evidence’ and current understandings of what various experts think is possible, building from there. An Effortless Economy is a fully automated economy, from producer to user. Open Manufacturing is crucial to making the productive apparatus we rely on freely available without taking control by force or exploitation, or even air tight reasoning. As labor economies fall off the productive wagon, the sorts of open agencies we discuss will be of even greater importance.

On January 19, 2008 I launched the Effortless Economy Institute with the essay ‘Toward an Effortless Economy’ and began studying a variety of fields mentioned on my EE bio. The Effortless Economy Institute was formed to analyze trends in market activity that go toward zero with a focus on labor markets and to observe social movements with the potential to achieve abundance like the P2P Foundation and other organizations that might not realize they are apart of the abundance revolution, such as The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, The Foresight Nanotech Institute, and OpenCog”