The "robots are taking our jobs!" folks seem to miss one very important point: commerce is not about the production and trade of things to keep people alive. In

The "robots are taking our jobs!" folks seem to miss one very important point: commerce is not about the production and trade of things to keep people alive. In fact, that's an extremely small part of it. Most all commerce is because humans are social and like trading for social reasons. That's not going anywhere. So activities that provide needed social capital aren't going anywhere. In fact, some may become quite more valuable. Things like white water rafting or fashion consultant. Things that involve the rote production of life-sustaining products? Sure. If your job can be replaced by a robot, it will be. There are many, many jobs that can't -- and my money says there are a lot more of those kinds of jobs coming down the pike. If that doesn't persuade you, imagine a world with strong AI where robots can produce anything you like. Would humans suddenly stop trading for things or collecting things? Of course not, in fact, it would become highly more nuanced. We're going to see industries emerge that seem incredibly stupid by modern standards, but which will be immensely influential as time goes on. The fact that we can't predict the future is a feature, not a bug of our existence. Having said all of that, it's certainly possible that we'll see a lot of economic stress in the coming few decades. Just like in the previous few decades. Perhaps even as much stress as we had during the Great Depression. But it's always been like that.