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Jobs are pretty shitty, they get in the way doing any real work. If we can have a functional society where robots deal with all the manual labor, the owners of

Jobs are pretty shitty, they get in the way doing any real work. If we can have a functional society where robots deal with all the manual labor, the owners of the robots get half the profits and the other half get spread uniformly amongst the populace, anybody who wants to work on things that demonstrably unprofitable like writing linux kernel, or teaching their children to read, or advanced math or analyzing adventure time for asinine thematic story telling, well, who knows what we might get done.

moron4hire 11y ago
Unfortunately, that's not what is going to happen. The owners will just take all of the profits, maybe even get themselves a subsidy passed to promote the use of robots under some "green energy initiative" or something.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  What's going to happen is decided by what everyone does. Owners keep all of the tech for themselves? We reverse engineer it and distribute it. Economics is simply a game/system that shifts every couple of decades/centuries. Keep in mind the rules you're playing by can change at any time.
  - rndmind 11y ago
    Would you recommend some reading that might elaborate upon your comment? I am inspired by this, and would like more information on this idea that economics is just a game that shifts throughout the decades between 'owners' and the rest of the population
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Piketty would be an excellent place to start. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec... "From this history, Mr Piketty derives a grand theory of capital and inequality. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, he explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx. Mr Piketty closes the book by recommending that governments step in now, by adopting a global tax on wealth, to prevent soaring inequality contributing to economic or political instability down the road."
hugh4 11y ago
And remind me why I, as a farmer (hypothetically) who spent millions of dollars buying a piece if land and millions more to buy robots to work on it, then spends all his time worrying about maintenance and shipping and prices and pruning and planting and weeds and so forth... remind me why I should consent to having my profits confiscated and given to other organisms for no reason other than that they happen to be of the same species? Imagine the social unrest when a large portion of the populace is literally of negative value. It's not going to be pretty. We need to start thinking now about how we're going to achieve a smaller but more elite population, so only useful people get born.
- wolfram74 11y ago
  one: taxes are your subscription to the society plan that offers you property rights and other elements that allow an investment in farm equipment to be profitable. two: the metric you use to determine the value of a person is highly arbitrary, based on GDP, divorces are better for society than marriages, despite the fact that children going through divorces suffer in school and later go on to accomplish less, capitalism is generally too myopic to actually address any existential risks to the human race.
- sinxoveretothex 11y ago
  There's a finite population that a single planet can hold, so there will have to be some form of population control eventually. Now, why the heck would you (the farmer entrepreneur) care about what the government does with the taxes it generates from your revenues? The question is: is your investment profitable enough? Everything else about your scenario is politics and, in a democracy, these things are decided (or supposed to if you drink from the cynic's cup) by the population. If the farmer (as a person) disagrees, he can just not buy or buy in another country or planet or whatever. A post-scarcity society has value enough for some of us that we'd run such an automated farm for little profit if only to selfishly sustain said society.

moron4hire 11y ago

Unfortunately, that's not what is going to happen. The owners will just take all of the profits, maybe even get themselves a subsidy passed to promote the use of robots under some "green energy initiative" or something.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
What's going to happen is decided by what everyone does. Owners keep all of the tech for themselves? We reverse engineer it and distribute it. Economics is simply a game/system that shifts every couple of decades/centuries. Keep in mind the rules you're playing by can change at any time.
- rndmind 11y ago
  Would you recommend some reading that might elaborate upon your comment? I am inspired by this, and would like more information on this idea that economics is just a game that shifts throughout the decades between 'owners' and the rest of the population
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Piketty would be an excellent place to start. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec... "From this history, Mr Piketty derives a grand theory of capital and inequality. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, he explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx. Mr Piketty closes the book by recommending that governments step in now, by adopting a global tax on wealth, to prevent soaring inequality contributing to economic or political instability down the road."

hugh4 11y ago

And remind me why I, as a farmer (hypothetically) who spent millions of dollars buying a piece if land and millions more to buy robots to work on it, then spends all his time worrying about maintenance and shipping and prices and pruning and planting and weeds and so forth... remind me why I should consent to having my profits confiscated and given to other organisms for no reason other than that they happen to be of the same species? Imagine the social unrest when a large portion of the populace is literally of negative value. It's not going to be pretty. We need to start thinking now about how we're going to achieve a smaller but more elite population, so only useful people get born.

wolfram74 11y ago
one: taxes are your subscription to the society plan that offers you property rights and other elements that allow an investment in farm equipment to be profitable. two: the metric you use to determine the value of a person is highly arbitrary, based on GDP, divorces are better for society than marriages, despite the fact that children going through divorces suffer in school and later go on to accomplish less, capitalism is generally too myopic to actually address any existential risks to the human race.
sinxoveretothex 11y ago
There's a finite population that a single planet can hold, so there will have to be some form of population control eventually. Now, why the heck would you (the farmer entrepreneur) care about what the government does with the taxes it generates from your revenues? The question is: is your investment profitable enough? Everything else about your scenario is politics and, in a democracy, these things are decided (or supposed to if you drink from the cynic's cup) by the population. If the farmer (as a person) disagrees, he can just not buy or buy in another country or planet or whatever. A post-scarcity society has value enough for some of us that we'd run such an automated farm for little profit if only to selfishly sustain said society.