Stage 3 · The vision

Material abundance & Universal Prosperity.

The reason I want to build the Manifester in the first place: the frontier of technology is moving incredibly fast, but the floor is not rising nearly fast enough.

Before plumbing we walked to the river. Before penicillin a simple infection could kill. Today we need a very expensive machine to make something as simple as a food-grade straw, a million-dollar machine for a solar panel, and a thousand other machines for a thousand other products. The floor of technology is not rising nearly fast enough.
From the pitch · Stage 3 · the floor
TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITY1900TODAY → the frontier the floor FLOOR WITH THE MANIFESTER THE GAP plumbingpenicillingrid power
Fig. 3.1 · Frontier vs. floorIllustrative
The framework

A different question than the one that leads to UBI.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOMEUNIVERSAL PROSPERITY Asks: how do we give people enoughpurchasing power to meet their needs? money → buy → only if someone elsealready made it and can ship it Asks: what if we gave people the productivecapability to meet more needs themselves? capability → make → repair → teach →the ability to solve the next problem SCARCITY STAYS A MATERIAL PROBLEMSCARCITY BECOMES AN INFORMATION PROBLEM
Fig. 3.2 · Universal basic income vs. Universal ProsperityPaper: "Universal Prosperity"

Money doesn't manufacture a solar panel. Money doesn't repair a broken water pump. Money doesn't create a local supply chain where none exists. It helps you buy those things, if somebody else already made them and can get them to you.

Steve Jobs called us a tool species: on a bicycle we outperform the condor. The personal computer freed us from a monopoly on information. Will the Manifester be the human tool for material freedom?

Far beyond a 3D printer

Raising the minimum technological capability available to any human being.

Energy generation
Energy storage
Water purification
Communications
General manufacturing
Education
Maintenance

Scarcity transforms from a material problem into an information problem. Each generation of the platform brings better technology, and fewer people care how high the ceiling is; they care how fast the floor approaches it. Manufacturing beats natural resources almost every time; the Manifester could be one of those rare products people prioritize buying, and on its own could justify being subsidized.

A PRODUCTIVE CAPABILITY COMPOUNDSwater filterrepair pumpteach 3 peoplelocal shopprototype → productcommunity produces
PICTURE

A remote community

"Manifests" its own water filtration system locally.

PICTURE

A remote clinic

Produces a specialized mix of antibiotics, tailored to each patient.

PICTURE

A student, then an entrepreneur

An idea for a machine is produced there and then; the prototype becomes a product. The community stops consuming technology and starts producing it.

Think about what Tesla did for the cost and scale of energy storage. What SpaceX did for launch. Now apply that same relentless engineering mentality to the cost of local productive capability. Not just making products cheaper. Making the ability to produce them cheaper.
From the pitch · Stage 3 · to Elon
Two more claims, stated plainly
Participation is the metric.

If humanity is serious about Type 1, we can't measure progress only by our most advanced machines. We have to ask how many people can actually participate.

Fire for a complex world.

Fertility rates may be dropping because our world's complexity outruns what we evolved for. The Manifester can be what fire was to our ancestors: more control in each individual hand, the burden of growth on the individual rather than the state.

Hardware is only half.

A powerful machine in every community wouldn't automatically create prosperity. You also need people who know what to do with it. That is Stage 4.

← Stage 2Four stages · one meetingStage 4 unlocked