[vturner]

My personal hope is that because of the democratization of information and growing ubiquity of makerspaces and knowledgeable people around, that we will begin to not only repair but also produce many of the goods that once only came prepacked in a box and were sold to us at a high premium so insurance companies and executives could live the nice life. If that happens, our overall life costs will go down as people can order raw parts/materials and produce high quality long lasting items themselves.

Just as an example, I've decided I want to grow microgreens and tomatoes indoors. To do that efficiently, one needs grow lights. Thanks to the CBD community, there is sufficient information online to spec and assemble yourself grow lights. Whether you want to solder individual LEDs to a backing or glue COBs onto a heatsink, it's all there. Sure the initial investment is more, but product you can produce is staggeringly more powerful and the lifetime cost dramatically lower than what comes prepackaged.

Of course, then again this might not all happen if children are forced to be in school most of their waking hours.