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If literally all imaginable human work was 100% automated then the cost of goods and services compared to today would be tiny. The poorest member of that societ

• unclebucknasty 9y ago
  >If literally all imaginable human work was 100% automated then the cost of goods and services compared to today would be tiny Well, that assumption is pretty general and doesn't account for natural resources/raw materials, energy inputs required for production, or other factors. It would also vary per sector, such that the statement is far from universally true. >The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world But, regardless, there would be some cost for goods. How do you propose the now 100% unemployed population pay for anything, let alone "live like kings"? The answer is that you would need to devise a method of wealth distribution that is orthogonal to capitalism. Say, for instance, a tax that subsidizes everyone else. That, of course, would not be capitalism. The point is that wage labor is fundamental to capitalism. Somewhere between our present state and 100% automation, a capitalist system requires so much intervention that it breaks down.
  • chii 9y ago
    I think taxing property ownership is the only natural conclusion i can draw from such an ultimate end-state. If you own any property, you pay a tax, and that tax is fed to those who do not own property, in such a way that they survive.
• codexon 9y ago
  The problem is, the plebians would not be able to get a job to pay for the goods/services no matter how cheap they may become. If you had robots making everything you could possibly want, why would you bother selling any of it to people who don't have any land, natural resources, or rare skills? They wouldn't have anything you want.
  • adrianN 9y ago
    Why bother selling it at all? You could just give away the things for free. The marginal cost of an item is just the energy needed to produce it. With robots building solar panels or something like that, those costs are negligible.
    • codexon 9y ago
      Because it still takes effort to give things away for free and as a robot owner, natural resources, land, rare skills can't be automated away.
      • Chris2048 9y ago
        Effort is a human skill, which the premise states is already automated. As are rare skills.
        • codexon 9y ago
          If you can even automate giving things away without worrying about people hacking/stealing/vandalizing your robots, then wouldn't it also be likely for you to spend all your resources on combat robots to take resources/land from other robot owners instead of wasting them on people that aren't giving you anything you want?
          • Chris2048 9y ago
            Why would the elite worry about that, life is good in a monopoly, no need to upset the balance.
            • codexon 9y ago
              Because resources don't last forever? Nor are they distributed among the land equally (for example oil,rare earth elements, uranium).
• chongli 9y ago
  The cost would be low, but since nobody would have a job the prices would be astronomical. Multiply people's purchasing power by a million, great, but a million times zero is still zero.
• tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  No, capitalism would eat itself, you can't run an economy without consumers.
  • ddnb 9y ago
    One could say it would hang itself by its own rope.
• morugin 9y ago
  >The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world. You forget things such as: meaningful work, respect from society, crime, cultural differences between the poor and the rich, interclass upward mobility (see any sociology textbook), intellectual stimulation.