The Liberator

John Robb,

No big surprises at the Aspen Institute conference:  the big money is still flowing towards huge, global-scale projects and schemes that aren't likely to work.  In stark contrast, Marcin and his team of farmer scientists working on post-scarcity economics is making lots of progress (see Marcin's economy in a box presentation for context).  They are doing this on a shoestring, which is a shame.  Here are some highlights:

• The CEB (compressed earth brick) press called the Liberator.  The team has completed its first product (the design is open source, of course).  It allows the rapid manufacturing of construction materials from nearly ubiquitously available resources.  
• They've built a working prototype of an open source drill press they are currently using in their fabrication processes.
• They are building the second prototype their soil pulverizer.  

Officially, Gifthub, the nonprofit arm of Wealth Bondage, has as its goal, Saving Capitalism. The way it is going, though, my secret agenda is saving my own ass when things fall apart. Hence my interest in The Liberator, open source compressed earth brick press. I could build a real house, in the country, live like a king selling bricks to my neighbors. I guess that would be saving capitalism too. I could be the Bill Gates of compressed dirt, and even give away some bricks as a public service.