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Comment by cautiouscat | Hacker News Reader

> Post-work society is an inevitability if we don't destroy our planet.

Is it?

Walk current technological progress down the road.

I can't see a future in which almost every system (both physical and virtual) are not automated and optimized by autonomous entities.

What do you do when everyone is out of a job?

If you don't want pitchforks and riots in the streets, you give everyone UBI and housing so society doesn't collapse.

Or you build bunkers and build robots to keep the riffraff out. Shock collars on the guards' necks.

For those who are as yet unaware that boot polish can be purchased cheaply in tins.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...

> The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

> If you don't want pitchforks and riots in the streets, you give everyone UBI and housing so society doesn't collapse.

As much as I’d love UBI to happen, in current geopolitiks it’s a no-go. People are not happy with having what the others have.

Autonomous police drones will likely be able to handle the pitchforkers and rioters

I’m all for an UBI but a future where people have no purposeful jobs, no way to actually make a real difference to anything around them, is a bleak one.

I would love such a future. I would be perfectly content focusing on my hobbies and playing video games rest of my life. Perhaps the UBI would be sufficient even for a little bit of travel.

I've been in such a situation for a period in my life, it gets really boring after 1-2 years. But idk, maybe it's different for you.

How do you determine who gets the house on the beach? Who gets the mountain view? Who gets stuck with the corner lot on a busy noisy road?

It wouldn't be a redistribution of our current assets like that. I think there would be a whole lot of repurposing of these things.

The beach houses, mansions, mountain views could be vacation places, or used as libraries, or simply dismantled for the materials.

The "slums" on noisy roads could be eliminated entirely and used for something people don't need to be at.

We'd move to a more equal distribution of assets closer to the middle line.

and anyone that disagrees you just kill them, right? That's what all good commies do.

Stop hiding behind rainbows and say what you mean.

Anyone that disagrees with the AI gets killed.

There is a reason why there was a Lenin's bust on a shelf in a Klaus Schwabb's interview.

Even if in the unlikely case UBI gets implemented, there is no way payment will be equal. Why would the rich give up their positions of power? They’ll just get more security and bribe politicians, enough to build private armies and fortresses so the poor and starving can’t touch them, and have no choice but to live out their lives in squalor…we’re seemingly headed that way according to many even without pervasive autonomous machines taking away all work.

Politics. Maybe we can all become politicians. If so the future looks bright! /s

Obviously the AI will conclude that no humans will get those things. The future is dark, folks.

You get downvoted by sufferers of cognitive dissonance.

The world is a fucking mess and they still believe in fairytales.

Sure, this time they'll give people ponies and rainbows instead of feeding them to the next WW meatgrinder.

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