Could it be that humanity at large is doomed to repeat its usual method of a "reset"? Planet Earth isn't getting any bigger, and if we're lucky worldwide population may plateau around 11 billion. Per Wikipedia, "Global workforce": "As of 2012, the global labor pool consisted of approximately 3 billion workers, around 200 million unemployed." Per The World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS), labor force participation has dropped from a little over 66% in 1990 to barely 64% in 2014. They give a per-country overview of these rates, and also per-income levels:

    High income	60%	60%
    Upper middle income	72%	67%
    Middle income	67%	63%
    Lower middle income	62%	59%
    Low & middle income	68%	64%
    Low income	77%	77%

High and Low income held steady, every other level shows decline.

Take a look at http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/..., which has this byline (June 2012): Strains on the global labor force are becoming painfully evident. Market forces will fail to resolve demand and supply imbalances for tens of millions of skilled and unskilled workers.

As automation becomes ever more adaptive and versatile, it will be interesting to see in what ways human employment may somehow remain economically of interest. But right now the labor force participation trends downward, and the only way that could be good is if the non-participation people are having healthfully happy lifestyles - perhaps as retirees or married to well-to-do spouses.

But if the social order of things is changing such that the prospect of gainful employment becomes less tenable for most, here's to hoping that a better world may yet emerge with minimal strife. Otherwise, it's all too easy to imagine us collectively squabble and fret over moral hazards, free-loaders, and property rights (including the intellectual kind), and that the crisis must first reach a breaking point before any material changes can happen.

If UBI is a non-starter, I've got no ideas other than for maybe getting serious about space travel and colonization.