> I can't imagine a more grim scenario than whole populations being entirely reliant on government money. Your imagination is lacking. We aren't there yet, bu

> I can't imagine a more grim scenario than whole populations being entirely reliant on government money. Your imagination is lacking. We aren't there yet, but something like basic income is an inevitable necessity if automation really takes off. In the past, automation created more jobs that it destroyed. Horse whip and buggy manufacturers went out of business because of the automobile, but the automobile created tremendous opportunity, for example. But we are closely approaching the point where additional automation destroys more jobs than it creates, if we aren't there already. There's a McDonalds near my house that has replaced a large number of their workers with computer screens. I really don't think there's anywhere else for those former employees to go, and I don't think touch screens at McDonalds is going to have the kind of civilization-expanding power as the internal combustion engine. I know it's a bit cliche to ask what we will do when the robots take our jobs, but ... what we will do when the robots take our jobs. There are a lot of people whose only skills can be trivially mechanized. How are we going to take care of them? And are we going to take care of them before their misery sparks some kind of a culture-wide uprising?