Industrial ecology

Industrial ecology refers to the fact that machines require other machines to make them. It turns out you don't need that many as the foundation of all machines. How many machines? Some people looks at 3d printing and answer: one. Not quite.

To make all things you really have to start with only a few dozen. You can do an amazing amount of things with just those few dozen. That doesn't mean those are capable of producing all others. What it does mean is those are enough to create the parts for other machines that are then capable of producing even more until you get to all.

You really only need three things to make everything. A plan, the materials and a person that knows what to do from there. A good machinist with a few simple tools for example could spend their entire life and never make the same thing twice. That would be a lot of things. A good machinist could not only replicate all their tools but change their scale to work on bigger or smaller things. There really is no limit and it all starts with very simple tools.

You do not need a global economy to build a pencil. Other options exist. You build whatever your existing economy can build and grow from there.

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