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I'm fairly convinced that eventually there will be two and only two choices: universal income and a shortened work week, or such extreme wealth divisions that s
by api 12y ago
I'm fairly convinced that eventually there will be two and only two choices: universal income and a shortened work week, or such extreme wealth divisions that stability demands a totalitarian police state resembling the worst sort of comic book cyberpunk dystopia. Age of abundance or feudal hellhole. Your pick. There simply will not be enough economically viable work to sustain any system that demands labor to maintain cash flows. Automation will be too efficient, programmable, adaptable.
... I suppose there is a third option: an anti-technology crusade that bans automation to restore employment. But a make-work economy sucks, and is not likely to succeed in the long term.
- socceroos 12y agoConsidering that it is natural for humans to lust after power I can tell you what I think is the most likely outcome. I think we're already seeing it form today and it's infancy doesn't detract from it's long-term danger.
- TsiCClawOfLight 12y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted, I think that you are absolutely right.
- tomphoolery 12y ago> Age of abundance or feudal hellhole. Why not both? We certainly have all kinds of societies on earth today. What makes you think we won't have areas that are highly progressive but also areas that are extremely sadistic in the treatment of their people?
- ajuc 12y agoAn intersting thought experiment is to compare their economic output. If feudal hellhole is more efficient eventually only hellholes will remain.
- tonyedgecombe 12y agoFortunately feudal hell holes seem less productive, especially in an age where productivity is more dependent on creativity than basic labour.
- api 12y ago"If feudal hellhole is more efficient eventually only hellholes will remain." Probably true. Evolution is amoral. If suffering has higher fitness, suffering wins. Just look at the ordeal that is human birth and infancy, for both mother and baby.
- motters 12y agoThat's the contemporary situation. We have something close to a police state with mass surveillance, militarised police and heavy restrictions on protesting. At the same time we're also seeing more interest in Basic Income and I expect there will be more of a political push for that in the near future. All of the above are about trying to keep the lid on a situation where technology is facilitating greater inequality. In the current situation oligarchs with large capital reserves and the ability to purchase legislation can continue to exfiltrate much of the wealth created by the population.
- ajuc 12y agoAnother option is self-enforced population decline (already happening in many developed countries) - for now it's artificaly solved by immigration from not-so-well developed countries, but this will stop at some point.
- api 12y agoWhile I see legitimate reasons to reduce population, that won't solve this problem. In fact it might make it worse. While the future economy will be heavily automated, it will still be an economy. Declining demand will still do ugly things to it. It's likely that a drop in demand will do more to squeeze out human labor than machine labor, since the former is more expensive and in a declining economy everyone tries to squeeze margin.
- yellowapple 12y ago> I suppose there is a third option: an anti-technology crusade that bans automation to restore employment. But a make-work economy sucks, and is not likely to succeed in the long term. That is, unless we start harvesting magic dust from some desert planet with really big omnivorous worms.