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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mishihari Lord" data-source="post: 6330013" data-attributes="member: 128">Economics is the study of allocation of scarce resources, "scarce" meaning that not enough is available to satisfy everyone's wants.  So you have to ask yourself, what is scarce in my world/universe/story/campaign?  Anything that isn't scarce can be safely ignored as part of an economy.  Sure, if energy, frex, is unlimited you will have out work out the societal consequences, but it's no longer part of the economy.  Off the top of my head, candidates for scarcity that I've seen used in fiction includes energy, creative design, reputation, raw matter, lifespan, reproductive rights, human labor hours, political votes, and real estate.  There are certainly many more possible.  Most of the attempts I've seen, even in published SF, seemed pretty silly, so if your players are critical types you probably want to do your best to poke holes in your economy to look for flaws before using it.So you postulated unlimited raw material + 3D printers + nongovernmental currencies.  The currency is kind of irrelevant.  As long as there's a stable medium of exchange, it doesn't matter what it is.  If you assume no other changes, then most of the current economy stays intact.  Labor, services, real estate, energy, and medicines retain their current value.  So just for fun, here's one possibility for material goods:  each 3d printer, let's call them "assemblers," requires a control chip from the government.  Uncontrolled assemblers are aggressively sought and violation result in stiff criminal penalties.  Governments really, really don't want people producing personal machine guns, bombs, F-16s, etc.  The government requires a yearly tax for operation of an assembler based on size, capability, etc.  If you don't pay your tax, the government doesn't send the authorization code for the coming year, and no more printing.  So it makes sense for a household to have an assembler for things they use a lot of, but it doesn't make sense to pay for assembler rights for something like a car when a new one is only needed every few years.  So there are specialized assembler shops where people buy such things.  The other limiting factor is creative design.  If, frex, you want a lamp, you buy the IP and assemble one.  IP rights are enforced by the control chips. Sure you can design your own lamp, but why bother spending the time when you can get a design for a small fee that looks nicer than yours anyway?  Bricks of raw materials ordered online and delivered by Fedex.A big open question, is if your assemblers can do chemistry.  If they can take energy, air, and water and make food our of it, frex, they're going to absorb a much larger part of the economy than if they can just assemble existing materials.  Chemistry-capable assemblers will probably take a lot more energy so than that becomes an important part of the price as well.  This affects real estate as well, since an awful lot of it becomes available if it's no longer needed for food production.So, implications.  With the exception of material blocks, logistics mostly goes away.  If you live in a medium sized city, everything you need can be assembled by someone within a short distance.  Manufacturing largely goes away as well.  Design and engineering expertise increases in value.  Generally everyone has enough stuff, but wealth can be seen from the design of possessions.  Poor folks might have crude, self-designed furniture with all pieces of the same type identical, while wealth folks while have attractive furniture of many different types.  Same for clothes.  Third world governments don't have the resources to properly police their assemblers, so every mayor, tribal chief, and gang boss stocks up on heavy weapons.  Conflict ensues and anarchy reigns over most of the third world.  The progress of emerging manufacturing economies (China, India) with respect to the first world stalls out.  Their manufacturing advantages are gone and the proportion of the population in relevant professions is much smaller than that of the first world.  On the other hand  there are enough very smart engineers/designer there to make sure that everyone has at least decent stuff, if not as good as first world.  They no longer have much to trade with the first world, but they can can continue to copy much of the tech without compensating designers so it kind of balances out.  Communist and other totalitarian governments use their control of assemblers to further tighten control of their population.I find it interesting that with the starting assumptions, I could make a plausible story for apocalypse, utopia, or anything in between.  A person's expectations for such scenarios generally tell me more about the person than about what would actually happen.</blockquote>

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