Chinese Company 3‑D Prints a House for $4,800

To paraphrase Lord Peter Bauer, the first recipient of the Milton Friedman prize, each child comes to this world not only with an empty belly, but also with a brain. Put differently, people are not parasites living off finite resources (though exception needs to be made in the case of most politicians and bureaucrats). They are discoverers and innovators, who look for ways to achieve more with less. They are the creators of wealth and drivers of human progress.


As a reminder of human ingenuity, consider that a Chinese company was able use a massive 3‑D printer to print 10 houses in 24 hours at the cost of $4,800 per house.


Let’s put that in perspective. There are 30 million people in Afghanistan, or 7.5 million families of four. At a cost of $4,800 per house (expect the cost to drop significantly over the next few years), it would cost $36 billion to build all Afghani families a new house. The current foreign aid to Afghanistan is $6.7 billion, which means that – using foreign aid money alone – it would take 5.4 years to have each Afghani family housed in a brand new Chinese‐​made home.


Will it happen? Probably not, since most of the foreign aid money to Afghanistan is devoured by parasitic government officials.