>“But most people are like horses; they have only their manual labor to offer…” I don’t believe that, and I don’t want to live in a world in which that’s the ca

>“But most people are like horses; they have only their manual labor to offer…” I don’t believe that, and I don’t want to live in a world in which that’s the case. I think people everywhere have far more potential. Developing that potential requires significant investment and the outcome is highly competitive: we are already seeing a massive polarization of the labor force ('hollowing out'). Sure, the new economy creates well paid internet and creative jobs, but those are highly competitive fields where 2nd best just does not cut it. It went from something that any monkey could do (agriculture), to something that required some education (craftsmanship), to formal education (cashier), to requiring college (programmer) to requiring a certain elite education (investment banker), and so on. Society is becoming more and more polarized and instead of StarTrek it looks like we are heading for Metropolis. > What would be the key characteristics of that world, and what would it be like to live in it? For starters, it’s a consumer utopia. Everyone enjoys a standard of living that kings and popes could have only dreamed of. Does not follow. The robots will replace human work, but resources will still be important. So an excellent house might cost $10.000 in land and materials, but since you would have no job and no money you would not afford it. Meanwhile, someone who owns the robot factory and associated intellectual property, might decide 1 trillion dollars is a fair price to acquire the whole state of Maine and transform it into his personal golf course. The end game of post scarcity capitalism is a completely feudal society where workers have no market value and are merely held as pets by the rich lords who want to.