"Something interesting happens when the cost of tooling-up falls. There comes a point where your production runs are small enough that the economies of scale that justify container ships from China stop working. There comes a point where making new things isn't a capital investment but simply a marginal one."
The West can return to manufacturing if it becomes a function of the creative class. This could be a major trend for the next decade.
My concern is that if this technology truly is revolutionary but does not carve out a sufficiently large piece of the pie for the traditional parasites (e.g., distribution moguls and IP lawyers) it could very easily be outlawed. (Probably not effectively, but note the number of people who are in jail today for replicating a plant.) This will be hard since 3D printing potentially increases wealth with much less involvement of money. So how will they take their slice of pie?
If it really is a disruptive technology, there will be plenty of cases where the economic advantages eliminate someone's job. I'm old enough to remember discussion about US factory workers being replaced by robots. Factory automation turned out to be far from the main threat to US factory workers' jobs.
There is no such thing as threat - a factory worker who cannot compete MUST be selected out, and replaced by something that is cheaper. This is for the betterment of all, at the expense of the said factory worker. This is called reality and those who choose to prevent efficiency is only retarding progress.
Now, of course, the said factory worker isn't obsolete - they should "skill up" and do something that currently isn't achievable via low paid labour, or machines. This is where value is derived, and should be encouraged (ala, re-education).
This guy puts it better than me: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc...
Also, I think it's a bit cruel to expect former factory workers to just "skill up" and become programming ninjas or whatever. Not everyone is born with the same cognitive assets.
Apart from the dubious economics of a Guaranteed Minimum Income, such a program would maintain the role of institutional intermediaries in our lives just as self-sufficiency again becomes possible.
Future homesteads will lose bids for natural resources because big actors will be able to exploit these resources more efficiently due to economies of scale. I'm for basic income.
Analogously, suppose AI and voice recognition progress to the point where all telephone calls to companies are handled cheaply by computer rather than being outsourced to humans in India. You wouldn't call this the West's "return" to the call center industry; you just say the need for the industry had been eliminated.
I can, however, imagine a scenario where you are kind of right. It could be that 3D printing requires a moderate size industry of 3D-printer servicemen who need to be physically present. In this case, the jobs could move back to the wealthy countries simply because the printers can't be remotely serviced. Nevertheless, this still requires a contraction of the manufacturing industry: if it didn't require substantially fewer resources be devoted to manufacturing with 3D printers, we wouldn't move away from the build-it-in-China model.
Now I think its the 1% who are Eloi. They live in an artificial paradise as the heads of monopolies and old-guard businesses, but every once in a while, we eat one of them.