Elon Musk: Automation will force governments to introduce Basic Income

* [The] much harder challenge is: How will people then have meaning? A lot of people derive meaning from their employment. If you’re not needed, what is the meaning? Do you feel useless? That is a much harder problem to deal with. How do we ensure the future is a future that we want, that we still like? *

I feel like work actually distracts many people from the realities of life and mortality and the meaning of life. Many people busy themselves with stuff that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Including many of us, too ... for example why do YOU have to be the person to build XYZ thing, when others can do it today, and in 20 years such a thing can be built by a second by an AI? It's like we are kids playing with toys and we think that this is the main thing in life, and without us playing with the toys, who would play?

I'm simplifying, and of course there are things that move humanity forward, including scientific and technological innovation. But people also work as a cashier at McDonalds and it's not like they REALLY derive meaning from that.

I was going to say that, throughout history, people engaged in religion and meditation much more than they do now. Work has become a sort of substitute, a way to escape having to think about the meaning of life and the big things. And people do it 8-10 hours a day.

Someone like Elon Musk has a hard time imagining how people can have meaning without work.

That is hilarious and naive. A cull is the much more obvious and likely solution.