Here is a silly question
Why will everyone need jobs if so much stuff is automated? Why not just give out free money?
Why will everyone need jobs if so much stuff is automated? Why not just give out free money?
However, our society rations resources, including resources that are needed for living, and including resources that are not actually scarce, on the basis of money, which can be returned based on capital or labor. Most people have no capital, so are forced to sell their labor. As work is automated, the return on capital increases, but the return on labor decreases (because more people are competing for a decreasing amount of paying labor).
Capital-holders wanting to preserve the existing system (if they are reasonably foresighted) are promoting the idea of a universal basic income. But the equitable long-term solution to this imbalance is Fully Automated Luxury (Gay Space) Communism.
In a system with property rights of the type found in capitalism, you need income from capital or labor to survive, basically. Unless the distribution of capital is levelled (and some force is exerted to keep it levelled), that means most people will rely on labor because they have no other choice.
Assuming that the labor economy is dying, then all laborers (truck drivers and code writers) need to figure out how to transition from generating livable income with their labor to generating livable income from their investments.
Difficult? Yes. But is it any more difficult than attempting to acquire sufficient resources to live using obsolete labor skills?
Because that means the existing capitalist class has to be forcefully deprived of much of their capital so that it can be redistributed, and a system needs to be set up to prevent it being from be reconcentrated.
The existing capitalist class, which holds disproportionate power, largely opposes this for obvious reasons.
And this is exactly the reason why the comment was posted. I.e., the debate about how to help laborers transition to different types of labor may not be the correct debate because it only pushes out the problem to the next technological revolution, which will likely come even faster. Improving technology reduces the need for labor while at the same time it increases opportunities for investment. Hence, perhaps the debate should focus on transitioning from a labor based society to an investor based society.
Counter-point -- if the situation really _is_ such that the vast majority of the population enters into a situation where they require capital that only a minority have, then its inevitable that some form of wealth sharing would develop in any non-dictatorial society. In other words, I argue that such a transition could happen in a relatively peaceful, progressive way. _If_ it really needed to.
I’m not saying this problem can’t be solved — I rather hope it can — but that’s why it is still an open problem.
I don't really see free money working, at least because people are selfish and won't agree to pay their money to someone else.
There is a lot of effort put towards solving starvation and other forms of poverty around the world, and staggering progress made on that front. But its not nearly as simple as sending food that was destined for the trash to another country is it? There's logistics and when crossing state boundaries, politics as well. If you try to merely send food -- or _any_ form of wealth to a less wealthy country, it won't always have the immediate effect of making people's lives better.