A few remarks from your friendly neighbor open hardware preacher:
- Magnet-less techs do exist, and do not need to be found in 19th century designs, which are usually very energy-inefficient. Modern knowledge of magnetic leakage, more efficient electronic drivers make these designs usually a bad idea.
- Open source hardware motors are a thing
- The crucial part in making good motors without using too much labor is actually in the coil winding machine that goes with it. Here again, open hardware is in business.
- Rare earth are badly named. They are not rare and most of them are usually a byproduct of the refinement of other minerals.
- The USGS published yearly reports on minerals, their production, reserves and strategic importance. Here is the 2023 one on rare earths
- China produces a lot of them only because it has cheaper labor, US and other countries have tons of reserve.
- Iron magnets are easy to make (heat iron and let it cold inside a magnetic field). I believe that rare earth magnets are basically the same with an alloy with a different Curie temperature.