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I have felt since I was a teen in the 90s that the world would be better served if offices, schools, and factories didn't exist. I thought that this centralizat

I have felt since I was a teen in the 90s that the world would be better served if offices, schools, and factories didn't exist. I thought that this centralization just increased the costs for everyone. Why not keep things decentralized and utilize the technologies we've built to manage the communications and interactions? If there's a CNC machine with one primary operator, why can he have that and the material gets shipped to him and he then ships the next stage product to someone else? With 3D printers this is even crazier right? For technologists, the only job that I can see requiring physical proximity is hardware repair and other helpdesk style roles. I do acknowledge that humans are social animals and there are benefits to face to face interactions, but these come at enormous costs. These costs aren't merely financial as so many people emphasize, but material. The material cost of cities on our planet is quite high. The amount of concrete, metal, glass, and other materials is quite large. With decentralization we would have an increased use of roads for logistical concerns, and we'd have an increased sprawl issue, but there'd be so much less traffic overall I think we'd have a net win on air quality. The next issue to tackle would be expressly limiting sprawl, and I have no idea how that'd be done. EDIT: Comments have been that this would decrease production. this is entirely accurate. Most items today aren't made to last and we have become accustomed to hyperconsumption of low quality stuff. No doubt. Scale has alternatively raised the standard of living the poorest among us by insane amounts. There is severe good and severe bad that have accompanied this remarkable economic boom of the last 100 years. The thought that I really have regarding this is that Amazon has made it possible to distribute insane amounts of stuff to a distributed buying public and there must be a way to manufacture in the same way. I am not a logistics person, and I could be entirely wrong (I probably am), but it's a dream and not a proposal.

jiveturkey42 3y ago
This was called Cottage Industry and it was the norm before the industrial revolution
bluSCALE4 3y ago
You lost me at shipping CNC machines. I can't wrap my head around that factory job being remote. Personally, I feel these jobs need to go away. Machines need to take them over and we need a new, subsidized generation to figure out what to do next. Global economies need to be a thing of the past.
spacemadness 3y ago
How is shipping something around during every stage of production for a modern product a good idea? That seems insanely inefficient.
warning26 3y ago
> Why not keep things decentralized and utilize the technologies we've built to manage the communications and interactions? (...) I do acknowledge that humans are social animals and there are benefits to face to face interactions, but these come at enormous costs. This sounds like a horrible vision for the future -- everyone completely separated, all interactions via video chat? All in the name of making sure we never have to leave our homes for convenience's sake?
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Nah. The thought is that you gain back the commute time and you can meet up with friends, family, and attend cultural events. You needn't confine all of your human interaction to the workplace.
  - warning26 3y ago
    I would love to know the percentage of time people WFH spend doing these things. I'd estimate it's close to zero.
thombat 3y ago
Economies of scale are a thing to reckon with. Right now in a factory that CNC operator ideally ships the part to the next workstation metres away without needing extensive packing for safe handling and it arrives in minutes. Or it goes to a shelving stack that buffers the flow of parts within the factory but still requires relatively little protective packaging. Freighting everything between micro-companies works in the other direction: it's more likely to be done for low-volume and/or very specialised parts.
localplume 3y ago
[dead]
vel0city 3y ago
The machines are expensive. You want the machines producing as much as they can to balance out their costs. Workers don't like working 24/7, so they'll stop working after a few hours (this is good!). If each worker has their own machine, that means the machine probably ceases to be producing when the worker is done. Coupled with potentially longer startup processes (many machines are way easier to keep running than do a cold start) it means these machines sit idle for most of their existence. This is sub-optimal. If you centralize the machines, then you can trade off workers and keep the machines running. You then also potentially don't have to worry about startup processes eating into productive time as often. This is than a major efficiency boost. On top of that, many times several different jobs might be related to the operation of that machine. You might need someone who specializes on cleaning the machines, you might have people specializing on the inspection on the machines, you might have people specializing on the day to day operations of the machines. Having that specialization can be a net benefit overall. Think about repair turn-around times. So you've got a CNC operator way off in the middle of nowhere, super distributed. He knows the basics on how to use the machine, but maybe not a lot more. Then it throws a fault, and he doesn't know how to repair it or doesn't have the equipment and parts. Now he's going to call up the head office, who is going to dispatch a repair person from somewhere (maybe close? maybe far?) to come out to some far away remote location to repair it. Meanwhile, for larger operations they might have some techs on-site who can do repairs within just a few minutes and get the machine functional sooner. You can co-locate a smaller cache of spare parts for a larger pool of machines, because multiple failures is probably pretty rare. All that downtime avoided turns into productivity gains as the machine gets to functional levels faster and the CNC tech gets back to work faster.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  > You want the machines producing as much as they can to balance out their costs And you may have a single operator who's responsible for keeping multiple machines going. Loading raw material, attending to alarms, etc. To add to what you said, there's a concept known as "lights-out manufacturing" wherein the machines are continuously reloaded by robots/automation with raw materials (and if needed there's other automation to offload completed parts) so they can continue making parts even after everyone's gone home for the day. An idle machine isn't making money.

jiveturkey42 3y ago

This was called Cottage Industry and it was the norm before the industrial revolution

bluSCALE4 3y ago

You lost me at shipping CNC machines. I can't wrap my head around that factory job being remote. Personally, I feel these jobs need to go away. Machines need to take them over and we need a new, subsidized generation to figure out what to do next. Global economies need to be a thing of the past.

spacemadness 3y ago

How is shipping something around during every stage of production for a modern product a good idea? That seems insanely inefficient.

warning26 3y ago

> Why not keep things decentralized and utilize the technologies we've built to manage the communications and interactions? (...) I do acknowledge that humans are social animals and there are benefits to face to face interactions, but these come at enormous costs. This sounds like a horrible vision for the future -- everyone completely separated, all interactions via video chat? All in the name of making sure we never have to leave our homes for convenience's sake?

BirAdam 3y ago
Nah. The thought is that you gain back the commute time and you can meet up with friends, family, and attend cultural events. You needn't confine all of your human interaction to the workplace.
- warning26 3y ago
  I would love to know the percentage of time people WFH spend doing these things. I'd estimate it's close to zero.

thombat 3y ago

Economies of scale are a thing to reckon with. Right now in a factory that CNC operator ideally ships the part to the next workstation metres away without needing extensive packing for safe handling and it arrives in minutes. Or it goes to a shelving stack that buffers the flow of parts within the factory but still requires relatively little protective packaging. Freighting everything between micro-companies works in the other direction: it's more likely to be done for low-volume and/or very specialised parts.

localplume 3y ago

[dead]

vel0city 3y ago

The machines are expensive. You want the machines producing as much as they can to balance out their costs. Workers don't like working 24/7, so they'll stop working after a few hours (this is good!). If each worker has their own machine, that means the machine probably ceases to be producing when the worker is done. Coupled with potentially longer startup processes (many machines are way easier to keep running than do a cold start) it means these machines sit idle for most of their existence. This is sub-optimal. If you centralize the machines, then you can trade off workers and keep the machines running. You then also potentially don't have to worry about startup processes eating into productive time as often. This is than a major efficiency boost. On top of that, many times several different jobs might be related to the operation of that machine. You might need someone who specializes on cleaning the machines, you might have people specializing on the inspection on the machines, you might have people specializing on the day to day operations of the machines. Having that specialization can be a net benefit overall. Think about repair turn-around times. So you've got a CNC operator way off in the middle of nowhere, super distributed. He knows the basics on how to use the machine, but maybe not a lot more. Then it throws a fault, and he doesn't know how to repair it or doesn't have the equipment and parts. Now he's going to call up the head office, who is going to dispatch a repair person from somewhere (maybe close? maybe far?) to come out to some far away remote location to repair it. Meanwhile, for larger operations they might have some techs on-site who can do repairs within just a few minutes and get the machine functional sooner. You can co-locate a smaller cache of spare parts for a larger pool of machines, because multiple failures is probably pretty rare. All that downtime avoided turns into productivity gains as the machine gets to functional levels faster and the CNC tech gets back to work faster.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> You want the machines producing as much as they can to balance out their costs And you may have a single operator who's responsible for keeping multiple machines going. Loading raw material, attending to alarms, etc. To add to what you said, there's a concept known as "lights-out manufacturing" wherein the machines are continuously reloaded by robots/automation with raw materials (and if needed there's other automation to offload completed parts) so they can continue making parts even after everyone's gone home for the day. An idle machine isn't making money.