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The author points out that plenty of societies have starved and killed their population en masse because cash crops were more valuable. Then he states that he

• 1letterunixname 3y ago
  It comes off as idealistic magical thinking. It is the norm for humans to be corrupt, selfish, and cowardly. When certain owners of capital are able to automate away jobs, they will keep the profits and fire workers. There isn't automatically some magical alternative or replacement work for them, only more competition for the few remaining scraps of labor elsewhere. My conclusion is most societies will either tear themselves apart in civil war after too many people are reduced to penury without socioeconomic mobility for too long, or socialism will be expanded and billionaires will be taxed. Since the ultra rich cede nothing without a fight, eventual civil war is the mostly likely choice they made because they captured the US political process and de facto direct for their continued enrichment at the expense of everyone else. Remember: Social Security under the New Deal, unlike the Townsend Plan, was a class warfare compromise and half measure. Modern Medicare isn't good health insurance, involves for-profit insurance companies, is complicated, and is very expensive to customers and to the government. UBI and universal healthcare will be necessary in America, but are far off on the horizon because of political polarization and manufactured consent shifting views to far right authoritarianism.