Fabrication

One of the most significant technological developments in the mid-to-late 21st century was the development of what has now come to be known as Fabrication technology. The personal fabricator, specifically, was highly disruptive both economically and socially, as people discovered that goods and increasingly complex machines could be printed off for merely the cost of materials, so long as the necessary blueprints could be acquired.

Though most personal fabricators were limited in the size of goods as well as the materials they could work with, some companies began to experiment with printing everything from vehicles to human organs, and soon these capabilities trickled down to the general public.

Soon, people could print everything from illicit drugs to firearms on their personal fabricators, and the old anti-piracy saying "you wouldn't download a car, would you?" started to take on a whole new meaning.

Prices steadily dropped and many of the old institutions--everything from car companies to pharmaceutical giants--fell by the wayside.

Medicine became available at near-zero cost, local firearms laws became near-impossible to enforce, food and other goods vital to life were cheap and plentiful, and society was, generally speaking, healthy, happy, and high as fuck, while economic institutions were collapsing.

Clearly, something had to be done.

The first response was the natural one: the United States passed the Orwellian "Economic Fairness Act", followed soon after by the "Freedom From Terror Act". World super-powers followed suit with similar laws, first making acquiring fabricators extremely difficult (legally) and later making them illegal outright, as pro-corporate lawmakers argued that personal fabricators, because they could in theory be used to build explosives, were explosives themselves. But the cat, as they say, was already out of the bag, and the unintended consequence of this draconian over-regulation was that while much of the world's superpowers began to stagnate and in some cases even collapse as they turned on their own people, the former third-world began to thrive. As a result, historians argue that it was the personal fabricator that was technology most-responsible for the formation and success of the Union of African Republics, which is arguably the most powerful political entity on the planet, as well as the explosive growth of the Free Council of Amazonia in the early 22nd century.

Illegal Fabricators Today
Today, despite the collapse of all those ancient governments, the same sort of laws are still intact. However, there is a tacit understanding by the authorities that personal fabricators can't be stopped, so it is usually only when an underground fabricator gets too large or makes his exploits too public, that CorpSec is called in to make an example of him.

As a result of these restrictions, most illegal fabricators are smaller, cheaper, and more portable. While some develop fabricators in their garages capable of printing out something as large as a truck, these are extremely rare. They're simply too difficult to keep secret.

Most of the fabricators on the street are also relatively simple and usually specialized in certain types of materials. By far, the two most common goods printed on the streets are firearms and recreational drugs like the infamous Flare, synthetic opioids and amphetamines like Wash, and plutonic acid, known by the street-name "Hannah". There are, however, also street fabricators that print out medicine, personal computers, clothing, and machine parts, though these are far less lucrative.

Synthetic Food
Corporations have managed to offer cheap and readily-available basic foodstuffs at such low-cost that all but the most desperate of the desperate still gets their food from either a dispensor station, a grocery, or restaurants.

Today's synthetic meats, grown in labs, resemble actual meat so closely that very few can tell the difference, though many still crave the old flavors of brands from their childhood.

Brands like Fab! whose slogan is "Some people still have a taste for that sweet, spongey meat substitute!"

Printed Firearms
Most firearms on the street today, and there are a lot of them, have been printed. However, most street printers aren't capable of printing the highly-complex military-grade weapons of today. Those that are become a hot commodity.

It's also important to note that most fabricators capable of printing firearms aren't capable of printing ammunition. Typically, this requires a more precise (and therefore rare) type of printer.

Street Gangs' Source of Money, and the Rise of the Doc Jockey
A certain class of hacker has emerged in recent years who makes his living by acquiring rare digital blueprints and delivering them to interested buyers. It's one of the more dangerous ways to make a living as a hacker, however, as the only prints worth stealing are the prints that the corps, the syndicates, or the gangs want to keep for themselves.

Most gangs make their money by controlling a network of fabricators that print out drugs, weapons, and other illegal goods. And the more rare the goods are thet they can manufacture, the more money they can make.

Naturally, there's a lot of money for anyone brave or stupid enough to steal a print from one gang and sell it to another.