will be surpassed so quickly, is a sure sign that they will spend the money.

next gen of this stuff roll out over and over, and I keep thinking "suckers." Sometimes there are leaps, but sometimes stuff is withheld and staged for sucking them into the ongoing releases of the latest and greatest.

It reduces profit margins and eliminates consumers.

constitutes a job. IMO under a capitalistic system it's a real conundrum. Capitalism is a flawed system IMO for the 21st century. I doubt it will last.

And given current trends, many will not do well, it's a rigged system.

which is what US manufacturing primarily concentrates on now.

For consumer goods perhaps you are right but low tech low skill manufacturing will never come back to America. As Walmart has shown, if you drive the price low enough there will always be enough buyers - which means foreign manufacturing or automation at home.

at least. I suppose arguments could be made farther back than that, but at the end of the dark ages moldboard plows began to proliferate out of China, making agriculture much less labor intensive. It doubled the productivity of an individual, so presumably destroyed half the jobs in agriculture. There, its been downhill since.

Around that time the Cistercians monks began to expand rapidly, and one of their things was harnessing water power using smaller more efficient designs of the massive old waterwheels. For grinding flour at first, then increasingly for every sort of thing that could be run from a rotating shaft. Steady and massive job loss ensued over the centuries...

I'm not arguing that your point is mistaken, only that this has been going on for a very long time. Nobody wants to go back to hand labor for everything, as that was a life (a brief life, all too often) of hard toil, but I haven't heard a good idea of where things stop, or how to fairly manage the distribution of all the wealth that automation can create.

the wealth that automation can create." And what constitutes a job in the 21st century. The old system is cracking and today is being band-aided together. I'm sure there are brilliant economists that know what to do, but I fear they are drowned out by those holding the $$$ and power of the US. None want to lose a dime in the game.

who exactly do they think will buy the baubles? The poor who can't even find enough money for food? Or maybe the working poor, that have been reduced to destitution?

Yes, three D printing is part of the future, yes it is a great thing... but if you do not employ actual people, you won't be able to find people who buy your goods.

UNLESS, and I do not see it under present mentality, we change how society works. This means yes, I produce those phones in a 3D manufacturing facility, BUT, I have a way to occupy the population where they can avoid those baubles and not think revolution or sundry revolting thoughts like that... it is a dead end.

Though I will not believe them not capable. It seems they have forgotten Henry Ford's lessons, yup, he was a bigot, but he figured out why his workers should be able to afford a Model T.

thinking in my post #4 in this thread. Supply/Demand won't work unless people have jobs, so there will be Supply, but no Demand, because no jobs, hence no $$$ purchasing power. These are very very strange times, because of all of the brainwashing, power plays and profiteers. What could be best for all of the people does not get done, it is stifled. There is a transformation going on in this country and I don't like the direction.

because there is a limit, and no matter how much propaganda you use.

That said, have used some of this for a fiction story, started as a short, it's evolving into something larger, and yes, uses our current dystopia,

repetition to feed the system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_%28film%29

That, will be a great story you're working on!!! ... for many are clearly living in a dystopia. The charade will only hold it together for so long.

What's the point of posting only about Apple products?