Yea, it's true on supply but this is a structural problem (i.e. minimum stocking sizes at 4K units, etc.) that would change if the demand was there. Agree with

Yea, it's true on supply but this is a structural problem (i.e. minimum stocking sizes at 4K units, etc.) that would change if the demand was there. Agree with [1] - that's partially already here with ProtoMold, Sunstone Circuits, Ponoko, etc. - centralized makes sense when you have economies of scale, but my comment was that this scale can actually be driven lower via technology. I think that development / test costs are a big deal, but maybe the "automate" part is more in the EDA sense of the term - than "sudo make me a sandwich" where your design is compiled directly.