Similarly, I don't know if it makes sense to colonize Mars, but I think it makes absolute sense to have permanent bases there. With a human presence on Mars we will learn things about that planet in years that will otherwise take many decades through robotic exploration.
It also has the bonus of not being millions of kilometers away, and hundreds of billions of dollars for a small crew to reach.
It feeds into the dangerous fantasy that once we ruin the earth we can all just go to mars and teraform it.
We can't, not even remotely close, and neither will your grandchildren's grandchildern's grandchildren.
We could very easily build a colony in Antarctica - but nobody wants to live there. Plenty of people want to live on Mars.
No doubt, tech has changed the world and will continue to do so. But I increasingly take it with a grain of salt when I hear predictions about robots being superior to humans in every way and making humans obsolete for various things.
* https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/05/economy/september-jobs-report...
How do you expect all 8 billion people to remain ““useful”” without artificially holding back technological advancement?
A hundred years ago, a high percentage of Americans lived and worked on farms. It was pretty common to not complete high school. This is why the military created the GED. Now, most Americans live on cities and it is stigmatizing to drop out of high school.
Education levels have generally risen over the years. It seems to me that additional education beyond high school could well become a normal expectation.
There have always been "useless" humans such as infants, the very old and those who are disabled. There will always be such, though we are living longer and tech (among other things) is changing things for people with disabilities.
But I don't see any reason to expect, say, 80 percent permanent unemployment as the new norm. I think it is much more realistic and healthy to expect people to stay in school longer.
Students are not generally counted among "the unemployed" and are generally not considered "useless," even if they don't have a paid job. Granted, there will be challenges in providing that at scale and paying for it, but, unlike UBI, it at least ties money to socially desirable outcomes and increases capacity for productivity.