I'm not particularly worried about dystopian outcomes like that because I don't see how they'd actually happen. I figure that there're basically two cases: 1.

I'm not particularly worried about dystopian outcomes like that because I don't see how they'd actually happen. I figure that there're basically two cases: 1. Automation kicks in slowly enough that the government isn't toppled, allowing people to simply vote on a more equitable way of doing things. 2. Automation kicks in quickly enough that powerful individuals can openly defy the government, acting above the law. The first case doesn't seem problematic. I simply can't see a society with >99% unemployment and mass poverty, with booming wealth in the hands of <1%, not voting to distribute the wealth, so long as they have the ability. The second case would then have sub-cases, depending on how the powerful-faction chooses to behave: a. The powerful-faction chooses to comply with the government despite being powerful enough to topple it. Then stuff turns out like in Case (1) anyway. b. The powerful-faction refuses to trade with everyone else. Then they'd have their own, exclusive economic system, but everyone else could still trade with each other. Then they might not be as wealthy as the powerful-faction, but they could still be much wealthier than people today. c. If the powerful-faction chooses to kill-off or cage everyone else, that'd be bad. So, sure, there's that hypothetical scenario in which people who rapidly rise to power would leverage that power to kill off everyone else. But, that just doesn't seem particularly plausible to me. And most of the other scenarios seem to have positive outcomes.