Automation Can't Replace Quality

While I was surfing the Internet for viral videos, I came across a YouTube video on 3-D printed bullets. The video shows of two guys testing out 3-D printed shotgun slugs (slugs are just huge bullets in shotgun shell), coming up with decent results with accuracy and penetration. Then I think about Lanier's ideals of automation and 3-D printers. 3-D printers are printers that can recreate a certain product by getting the design online and "print" it out using substances called "goops". The reason I brought this up is that even though the digital economy Lanier designs may tolerate automation (Lanier focuses on benefiting the middle class by making data valuable, not about pursing a Luddite-like plan to make all industry to be on manual labor), the quality may be pretty shabby.

When the guys fired the slugs, they made it through with decent accuracy and penetration*. This then challenged my thoughts on 3D printers. The quality of the slugs are low, since the slugs was crudely designed; the accuracy of a bullet depends on whether the bullet is aerodynamic, since it requires spin to hit targets perfectly. Also, the whole product was made of goop, so I thought that the material is not designed to handle the force of the burst of the percussion cap (the gunpowder of the bullet). 

I believe that when Lanier's plan of monetizing information comes to fruition, and 3-D printers are used without compromising economic dignity, and some of the products of 3D printers are lower-quality than the original, then the original products will become an commodity than its copies. Lead bullets are now more valuable than the goop kind. Unless they can come up with a kind of goop that can reproduce the features of metals, then real "bullets" become gold in the market. 

And not only that, I think that the workers that create the real products will have a better salary because since the value of the commodity rises, then workers get more cash for their paycheck. With more capital rising for the managers, then the average wage for the gunsmith worker will rise, since the new average capital, then comes the new wages.

Give me your thoughts on the subject, and enjoy the rest of your vacation.