The “Star Trek Society” roadmap

Based on the Sci-fi series, the Star Trek society is a utopian society where people work for the benefit of all and to improve themselves. Money does not exist as such — only to exchange with other aliens in “dodgy business”. All that you might, need you can get it for free from a “replicator”.

Our western society is suffering now. Not really as a whole but many times tragic at individual level. The middle class get squeezed to pay for things like decaying infrastructure, skyrocketing costs health and social security for an ever ageing population. Wealth is not well redistributed and sources of income for the families can vanish overnight.

I’ve recently watched an economics documentary giving the example of an American Tier one automotive supplier operating in France. This company had as main shareholders American pension funds requiring a minimum return of 14%. As result, they would close factories in certain countries — France in this case — not because of bad management or bankruptcy but by not achieving the expected return and opening them in others where, “theoretically” the return targeted could be achieved.

How to break the cycle of boom and bust, end the dependency of amoral corporations and to return value to the local communities? Here is my suggestion…

The solution might be linking the development of additive manufacturing technology to society alternative modern behaviours, such as sharing of resources.

Today production resources, as automotive production, are concentrated because the initial investment is so great that only by mass production it is possible to achieve an economically viable result for the project. The concept of production line, broadly developed by Henry Ford (standing on the shoulders of giants) promoted output efficiency by concentrating production factors — such as labour, equipments and capital — and the deskilling of assembly tasks. Until that time, highly skilled people and a large amount of time were required to produce small amounts of the end product.

The concentration of production resources and deskilling makes it possible to relocate factories and the huge initial investment (capital intensive projects) is the reason for the dependency on shareholders, markets, banks, etc.

Imagine now the following. I live in a block of apartments and there are normally 100 cars in the garage. Strangely enough, there are at least 50% of the cars during the day and I could imagine that me and my neighbours could have some kind of arrangement to need only 50% of the cars still meeting all our needs in terms of transportation — I’m not talking about leisure driving but the “pragmatic” needs.

In this scenario, imagine it would be possible to produce in the freed space of the garage, using additive manufacturing technologies and to employ 2 — local — workers dedicated to produce and to maintain the vehicles. Cars would be electric, charging by contact, autonomous to pick up users whenever, where ever.

Technology is close to provide this product, as we have multi-material 3D printing and the necessary skills would be integrated in the design-for-manufacturing type of process. This new car concept would be a more functional and easy to produce.

The economics? If you pay around 350 Euros/month for a shared use of the transportation service — same as for a leasing of a B class car — and your other 49 neighbours as well, we would have 50 x 350 = 17500 Euro/month of income. So, not considering the initial investment, I guess the salaries, energy and spare parts would be taken care of. Why not thinking as well that the materials required to build or repair the car, could be recycled and reused within the community?

This would need some “leaps of faith” to be possible: sharing of cars, working within and for the community, a different type of car and usage. There would be a loss of comfort and pride of owning your own “wheels” but we could win so much in economic independence, work safety and even saving natural resources. There could even be blocks, groups of apartments or houses dedicated to different products depending on the performance and efficiency of the competence…

True, that a new “economic ecosystem” must be created but it is not impossible. Local Motors, a company developed to create micro-factories has just presented “Olli” — an autonomous driving car, with a capacity for 12 people and where parts are supposed to be produced locally by 3D printed under 10 hours and assembled in 1 hour -https://localmotors.com/olli — and they are keen to hear from local communities to sell their concept.

My conclusions aim not to be an absolute truth but rather the result of reasoning on facts, shared experiences, using possibilities and conjectures to fill blanks left by incomplete stories or extremely complex scenarios. As times change, we must make the effort to adapt but we also must demand political leadership to achieve a more just society. Who knows, someday we might have a society where we only work to better ourselves…

As always, please share with me your views — you never know what it could spark :)