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This touches such an important issue! The answer is "yes" but it must become "no". Our culture has made it such that we think life is about work and "accomplish

This touches such an important issue! The answer is "yes" but it must become "no". Our culture has made it such that we think life is about work and "accomplishing things". "Things" are of course work things. We might or might not get to a point where we don't need everyone to work. That should be awesome. Basic income guarantee might solve the economic problem associated with it, but not the social problem. We cannot derive our self-worth from our work. We need to learn to appreciate "free time". We need to legitimize enjoying and practicing the arts. I personally would love a future in which I could focus on practicing potter, learn Japanese, study economics just for fun and build the occasional video game or AI player for existing video games without worrying if it makes money or not. From conversations I've learned that this is not the case for many people. In a recent interview Marc Andreessen claimed that people in the midwest don't want checks form the so called coastal elites, but they want opportunities. We need to learn to be happy about the freedom we get form just getting the checks.

njarboe 9y ago
Maybe a good possible future would be that people focus on earning and saving capital when they are young and try to get to financially independent (ie., can live off the production of saved capital) as soon as possible. If most people were financially independent, jobs people did not want to do would pay well and people could quickly reach financial independence working these jobs (in a decade or so?). I think working hard and having the feeling of earning a life full of choices would go a long ways to prevent the psychological malaise of sucking from some one else's (the government) teat ones whole life. Also, having most of society overseeing capital instead of the 1% would probably be a good thing. This is possible today in the USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. See the Mr Money Mustache[1] blog for an extended description and discussion of one way of living this life. [1]http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

njarboe 9y ago

Maybe a good possible future would be that people focus on earning and saving capital when they are young and try to get to financially independent (ie., can live off the production of saved capital) as soon as possible. If most people were financially independent, jobs people did not want to do would pay well and people could quickly reach financial independence working these jobs (in a decade or so?). I think working hard and having the feeling of earning a life full of choices would go a long ways to prevent the psychological malaise of sucking from some one else's (the government) teat ones whole life. Also, having most of society overseeing capital instead of the 1% would probably be a good thing. This is possible today in the USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. See the Mr Money Mustache[1] blog for an extended description and discussion of one way of living this life. [1]http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/