RepLab Vision
Introduction
We shoudl begin by assuming that robust tools of production - the os fab lab - or RepLab - are a multi-billion dollar market. As such, we can get support for this, by positioning this as the incubation of free enterprise that comes directly out of developing the 10x lower cost tools of production. Moreover, we can motivate this
Level 1
Open Source FabLab. Approach in a modular fashion of developing technology 'primitives' - along the lines of http://bildr.org. Just a plain old opensourcing effort.
Level 2
Economic significance of RepLab tools comes from the ability to engage in their production. This must be a central feature, as it allows for people to develop free enterprise.
Level 3
The deeper level of economic significance comes from designing free products that can be produced with the available tools. Free business models are a part of that, and link directly into creation of post-scarcity resilient communities.
Strategy
We can motivate funding of the above via low-cost replicability of the whole package. If we include metal melting in the process for generating steel or aluminum from scrap, then we can talk about people investing in productive capacity at negligible cost.
Therefore, I propose that we motivate funding by access to the most amazing hackerspace in the world. I propose we build that at 43 cents per square foot at Factor e Farm, and populate it with tools.
People can redeem their investment into the project with the redemption of their contribution at $50 per day usage of the entire RepLab.
For example, a person contributed $1000 to the project. For that cash, they could melt metal, generate steel, build a tractor with steam engine and hydraulic system for that price.
The assumption is that the designs and tooling is available. With about $1M investment, there is no question that this could be done. The entire equipment base can be built for $500k. The R&D for product design would be a dedicated year effort by 10 people, for items of key interest, at $50k/person.
Thus, investment would require 1000 donors at $1000 each. The facility should fit about 20 investors at a time, for a powerhouse development center of open technology. Redemption time per person would be 1 day per $1000, or 3 full years to redeem value of all investors. This is an acceptable return on investement period, and the entire lab can be built in 1 year from the point of availability of funds.