When starting a new venture, every entrepreneur goes through the same process.
You look at your assets. What you have on hand. You then make estimates of what you need to accomplish your goal. The difference between what you have and what you need is the gap you need to bridge.
When we’re building resilient communities, we go through the same process of comparison. What we’re finding (and in the US in particular) is a massive skills gap.
The Skills Gap
Currently we have a yawning gap between people that can actually make/grow things and people that work in highly specialized bureaucratic roles. That’s a big problem for those of us trying to build resilient communities before economic re-localization becomes a necessity due to the collapse of the “ponzi” economy.
How bad is it?
Here’s an excellent graphic (click to enlarge) from the National Journal (that I found through Derek Thompson at The Atlantic). It shows percent of GDP by industry between 1947 and 2007.
From its portion of GDP, we can infer that the number of people in the industries that are focused on making things has dropped precipitously. Agriculture share is down to 1% and manufacturing has slid to 11%.
IN contrast, the ponzi economy has been growing at a breakneck pace. For example, FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) has reached a whopping 21% of the economy. Unfortunately, most of the people and the many of the specialized skills that are useful in this industry today won’t find much of a need within a re-localized economic system.
A Bright Spot?
Is there a bright spot? Is there any hope in closing this skills gap? Here’s what I see:
- There is still a large number of people, regardless of industry affiliation in their day jobs, that have productive hobbies that involve making things (from cars to growing gardens).
- A growing number of entrepreneurs that are breaking the mold and creating businesses that make/repair things locally, despite the difficulty finding support (see this story about an entrepreneurial cobbler in Toronto for an example).
- The large number of computer engineers, from a variety of different industries, that are diving into personal fabrication and building systems for community resilience. We’re going to see lots of activity in that last segment.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert Heinlein.
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{ 7 comments }
I like that there’s new local shops popping up now as people start demanding quality work from a face they can talk to. What bothered me is that these new shops are far more expensive than the mass industrialized products.
But then it made sense… We have way too much stuff! It’s all crappy too! If we bothered to invest in fewer, higher quality things, we’d see a sharp rise in efficiency, waste reduction (even re-purposing waste as new inputs to other systems), community building, “reskilling”, and many more benefits that far outweigh the paltry drawbacks in comparison.
And of course the costs will go way down as we keep developing better fab tech and tools. I’m excited for this future, I just hope we get to see it.
“We have way too much stuff! It’s all crappy too!”
I’m convinced that WalMart now exists mainly to deal with China’s landfill problems.
You can get three 1,000 oz stepper motors and the controllers for them for less than $1,000. This is more than enough for any CNC table you’d think about putting together. The cost of automation is coming down, and with it micromanufacturing. Lean manufacturing knowledge is spreading. Other technologies, like 3D printing, developed by large corporations to reduce costs also sow the seeds of their demise as they evolve and diversify.
I noticed a discrepancy between the chart and your text – the chart is % of GDP by industry rather than employment. I expect they’d be related, but not sure it’s 1:1.
Thanks for your efforts on the blog, it makes for some thought-provoking reading.
Fixed.
Great post.
Its heartening to see a “repairer” movement alongside a maker movement.
See: http://www.ifixit.com and http://www.ifixit.org
i would have expected to see a much sharper increase in the “FIRE” compartment, i’m a little surprised that in 1947 it already made up 10% of GDP!
as for self fabrication and, especially, 3D printing… i’m still unconvinced about it.
i’ve seen a couple of “small” 3D printers at work and i’ve seen the kind of objects you can fabricate. there’s definitely a lot of potential, but we’re definitely not there yet.
a makerbot is a very SLOW device, very prone to breaking and in need of constant attention: just printing a very small and simple object without evident failure is considered a success. the complexity of stuff you can print is quite low and the material used in fabrication makes the object quite useless anyway (too soft).
theoretically you can use a 3D printer (i think a rep-rap) to duplicate itself but i seriously doubt it’s actually practical.
and even looking on the web all you can find are gimmicks, not serious applications.
the most useful things i’ve seen lately are enclosures for home-brew electronics stuff.
nice, but it’s far from revolutionary.
i repeat, i know there’s a lot of potential in the business but, right now, i find it difficult to consider it a viable industry.
regards
)
M
(i obviously more than willing to reconsider!
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