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> Instead of worrying about the rich/poor divide, we could instead try to improve conditions for those on the bottom (food/shelter/health are all good starting
by username223 13y ago
> Instead of worrying about the rich/poor divide, we could instead try to improve conditions for those on the bottom (food/shelter/health are all good starting points).
As robots and computers take over more of what humans once did, we'll have to deal with this problem (see various articles by Kevin Drum). Unless you're fine with a "Mad Max" scenario, some kind of welfare state or minimum guaranteed income is probably the least-worst option.
- rodgerd 13y ago"Mad Max" is probably the wrong analogy - 2000AD's Judge Dredd (85%+ unemployment, riots against automation, and so on) would be the dystopian sci-fi you're looking for.
- pit 13y agoVonnegut's Player Piano also comes to mind: society is divided into a management class and an underclass. Nearly all jobs are performed by machines, so no one in the underclass has to work, but everyone is assigned a meaningless job. It's partially about the seductive nature of technology, and how human ingenuity is capable of engineering us into irrelevance.