FarmBot grows all the food you need in your backyard. With your 3D printer you design and manufacture spare parts for your house and cars. Autonomous drones deliver anything else you may need from the factory nearby - produced by machines.

What was pure science fiction 20 years ago, is already a viable ecosystem today (despite some pretty significant regulatory hurdles, obviously). But what are the economic impacts? There's some challenges ahead that mess with the foundations of our economic systems and beliefs.

Jeremy Rifkin, an economic and social theorist, tackled the topic in his book "The Zero Marginal Cost Society". Summarized very briefly: If machines produce everything we need, including their own spare parts, running on renewable energy, the costs of an additional unit of production become practically zero. With that, in a competitive economic environment, prices will be close to zero as well - everything is practically free. And with that, companies won't make income, nor profit.

There is another particularly important prediction derived from this development: there will be no need for workers. What this means is the end of the economic system as we know it. No work means no jobs, means no income. But because there's no costs, there's no need for income. That is, in an ideal world. Obviously Rifkin's predictions imply many more debatable assumptions, but they are a very interesting starting point to think about our future.

Most of all, which way are we willing our economic system to go?

Will we fight the machine age and try to stick to the existing economic orders? After all, we got used to needing money to fund our living standard and differentiate ourselves from one another.

Or will we see those developments as an opportunity to provide better living standards to every person on the planet at almost no cost? And how would a world look in which we get all our material needs fulfilled at virtually no costs? How will we spend our time?

May be those questions will need to be answered much sooner than we imagine… or hope.

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Please share any comments and inputs you may have (comment function, twitter, e-mail, etc.). In my short write-ups I address topics that I am particularly interested in because they align with my values and beliefs. As such, they are always a reflection of my ideas, thoughts, and opinions. The only thing I am positive in that regard is that I do not have all the perspectives, all the knowledge, or all the facts - help me be better tomorrow.