Improvements to automation; automation on top of automation.
Planetary colonisation planning.
It doesn’t feel like a continuation of what’s gone before, it feels like a step change. When the machine dominates man in all employable qualities, then it’s game over and capitalism breaks down for most people.
I wish I were wrong, but I can’t see a way out of that. Perhaps it’s good, ultimately, because people may no longer have to work in the future.
An optimistic view I guess is to work out how we transition to a new economic system that both continues to generate wealth and to share it. That sounds very much like a problem that must be solved centrally, which we are not good at, so perhaps therefore (based on historical patterns) we will have to await such an extreme level of capitalism that a revolution forces complete automation hand in hand with sharing wealth, ie coordination will only happen when all alternatives (corruption, brutal autocratic rule, state capitalism, etc) are proven unsustainable.
How did you make that connection? If you aren't hunting, you can do farm work. If you aren't doing that, you can produce tools. If you aren't doing that, you can go mine ores, make clothes, etc. Its not like agriculture was invented and suddenly anyone who wasnt farming was philosophizing, there is always something productive for you to do. Having a UBI without replacing the people who actually do the productive work is just rewarding those who don't work, you didn't suddenly remove the need for work, someone still has to do all that work that needs to get done, but now there is less incentive for them to do so when they can just kick back and worry about someone else doing it.
A UBI is a socialist fantasy that will only ever work if you have a slave force (read: AI) that does work for free.
This is exactly my point.
However, I still disagree with you; UBI (as currently proposed) would provide so little income that most would still have to do at least some work to maintain their standards of living. Paying me $1,200 a month would not cause me to suddenly sit on my ass, for example. And, capitalism can still exist alongside UBI: if you want more money, compete in the market to get it.