Ignoring all of the text past the block quote: These are not new ideas; this was all previously thought of by The Big 3 Sci-fi writers (Robert A. Heinlein, Art

Ignoring all of the text past the block quote: These are not new ideas; this was all previously thought of by The Big 3 Sci-fi writers (Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov), with Isaac Asimov making most of the robotics predictions. Paul Krugman (one of the articles linked to) chose economics because it was the closest available field to Asimov's Psychohistory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_krugman#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_krugman#Personal_life [Asimov spoilers after the quote, with non-spoiler links after] " What’s going to happen is massive income transfers to flesh and blood human beings. These income transfers will come to be seen as a right-of-birth. This will make complete social sense once you realize that most of the beings on earth will be robots and therefore not-of-birth. Birth is something that happens to a minority of beings who are special, flesh and blood humans. The concern, as I see it, is over accepting the dual truth that robots will in all likelihood be sentient beings with an inner life just as ourselves, and they will live in grinding inescapable poverty." [Begin Asimov spoilers] Asimov envisioned that 50 Spacer colonies would eventually leave the solar system and colonize other systems. Their societies would develop according to the group psychosis and phobias the original floating colonies possessed, adjusted to fit their new environments. (The 50 colonies resembled a spectrum of psychosis where the social phobia of the most extreme Spacer worlds progressed to the point they only managed physical contact for sexual reproduction, which they eventually phased out in favor of asexual reproduction, I digress). Earthlings feared robots and relegated them to agricultural and infrastructure tasks while shunning them from their agoraphobic society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria is the last and most extreme of these Spacer worlds. The decision to become social isolationists with a heavy dependency on robotic labor resulted in the demise of their society, and was the type of social decay that Asimov feared might occur in humanity following the adoption of robots. [End Asimov spoilers] I highly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_asimov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_asimov for anyone interested in this topic. There are some online sources for his work, and there is a large availability at http://www.abebooks.com/ http://www.abebooks.com/ Other Links: http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov_bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov_bibliography http://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy http://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL34221A/Isaac_Asimov http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL34221A/Isaac_Asimov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_series_%28Asimov%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_series_%28Asimov%29