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"* If we do want to work towards that state, what then does it mean to live a good life?"

We solved that a long time ago. Rich people's offspring (ancient equiv of trustafarians) got an education to learn how to live the good life. Aka the liberal arts. Philosophy, etc.

There is a long corrupt history afterwards where at least some businesses wanted the aristocracy in their corporation, so suddenly "gettin an education" becomes an aspirational good for the middle class and down. Then it turns out a world owned by very rich philosopher kings works pretty well, you can't have a world operated by philosopher peons, so "education" is very carefully conflated with "training" and for prole-schools has completely replaced education with training (see vocational and tech schools) Then the middle class has to have ALL kids pay ANYTHING at all, ANYTHING, in order to keep up with the other kids who are already paying ANYTHING they'd like to charge as tuition. In fact the .gov has their backs, raise tuition sky high the .gov will guarantee the loans.

So kids (aka 20-somethings) today are poor, because for generations they've been willing to pay "anything" for credentials so the monopoly-ish providers are more than willing to charge "anything" (kinda like health care). All because GGG-Grandpa lost his job to Sir Earl Duke of BumbleF and politely blamed it on his lack of .edu rather than being a peasant where Sir Earl is a Duke. Its the long term effect generations later of monarchy-phillia or whatever its called.

>Do we want to work towards establishing a society where leisure is the default, guaranteed state?

Leisure will not be the "default, guaranteed state".

Slums and ghettos with huge masses of devastated ex-middle class left to mostly rot and a much smaller semi-middle-class and extra rich leave in closed guarded communities will be the default.

Well not if we don't work toward it!

A leisure-filled society is an inherently stable thing. It's just not a direction we're headed. But perhaps those of us with long-term vision can steer things a little.

After all, those slums aren't a stable thing. They're a civil war waiting to happen.

I would argue that we're mostly there already.

The future is already here, just not evenly distributed. SFO doesn't look like Detroit... yet, but give it time for the brush strokes in the paint to smooth out.

People love to believe the sky is falling. Fortunately, it rarely does.

LOL what makes you think he's not living in Argentina or Greece or Detroit or (insert pretty much any 3rd world) today?

You'd like to Think it can't happen to you, maybe even make fun of people who suggest it could happen so you'll feed better. That doesn't mean it won't happen to you anyway.

The startup lesson here is its OK to have your illusions, especially if they're fun or make you feel good, but making decisions based on illusions being true leads to disaster more often than not.

>People love to believe the sky is falling. Fortunately, it rarely does.

Survivorship bias. That and (if an American) living in a country with a shortish history (mostly upwards until now).

The sky has fallen tons of times for lots of cultures and even whole empires.

Once there was a Babylon for real and an assorted thriving empire with millions of people. Once the Roman Empire ruled the world. Once Native American Indias lived and roamed their land as they pleased. Once there was a thriving Jewish community in Germany and Europe.

I object to those last two! Those communities didn't collapse, they were deliberately murdered from outside.

Well, who said anything about "internal collapse" only?

We're talking about "the sky is falling" situations (or, more generally, dire outcomes).

Those can be both external and/or internal.

And the original "sky is falling" metaphor that the parent used also favours outside factors.

If leisure becomes the default (which job trends would tend to suggest), it becomes a lot harder to punt on these existential issues--you don't get the shelter of the daily grind or shitty retail job to protect you.

My mother always calls that "a better class of problem". God willing humanity should someday have to confront its existential "issues" like a bunch of spoiled schoolchildren rather than going cradle-to-grave without confronting anything more important than how to reach next year!

The way you put issues in quotes and use the word 'spoiled' implies that even though you call it a "better class" of problem, you still look down on it and wouldn't want it.

I'm using a little bit of sarcasm in acknowledgement to the fact that one person's existential issue is another person's frivolous rant. We generally look down on teenage existential angst, don't we? Well how are they experiencing anything other than a real look at human life unconstrained by the need to earn your bread (since someone else already buys theirs)?

I think it's easily possible to reorganize society around higher goals than material production (many societies have been so-organized), but that also requires a bunch more effort than just instituting mass leisure and letting everyone figure it out for themselves.

There's also a level of Yiddish sarcasm in the statement: I talk like I look down on something to sarcastically praise it. (I realize this sounds stupid, but you would never just praise something, because that would bring bad luck on it.... is the thought. It's a thing.)

To be honest, capital vs job growth has been delinked locally, but I suspect it is still linked globally.

A huge number of people in India and China are now employed for example. The tablets being bought and sold around the world are being manufactured somewhere.

I am a bit surprised by the comments here, which constantly look temporally, while the issue really is geographic.

China/India/Brazil and the third world workers endure horrible conditions to create work.

They are cheaper than automation.

Its only once they start unionizing, and fighting for their rights (after they have been able to improve their country in the first place), that the automation starts appearing in their countries.

In essence, isn't work going to those most capable and efficient at working at it, with lip service being paid to labor and human rights?

> that the automation starts appearing in their countries

Well automation is already happening there - do you think the ipads are built entirely by hand? Automation will continue to increase globally whether they unionize or not, those types of things will only accelerate an inevitable process.

I'm looking at a plant to manufacture/assemble gen sets in India, and over time its been moved slowly from manual labor to slightly automated.

China is far from fully automated though - witness Foxconn finding that its workers are asking for more, and their search to replace people with machines.

I don't think the decoupling argument has been made as conclusively as everyone seems to be assuming. Look at the source in the OP for this [1]: These are some seriously misleading graphs.

First, plotting both labor productivity and GDP doesn't make much sense, as the former is almost exactly determined by the latter. They're just measuring GDP.

Secondly, they zoom in on the post-WWII era, then proceed to ignore the biggest long-term economic issues of the time period: The hangover from WWII, with the corresponding stable demand for US infrastructure and labor as the world rebuilt itself, and the housing/derivitaves bubble, as a combination of fraud and self-delusion caused the computed GDP numbers to shoot off into the hypothetical-wealth stratosphere even as the economy was faltering.

Once you account for the elephants in the room, there's nothing surprising left in the graph that would lead you to believe that the robotic obsolescence of labor is around the corner.

[1]: http://andrewmcafee.org/2012/12/the-great-decoupling-of-the-...

I think Maslow's hierarchy implicitly answers many of your questions. "Keeping your head above water" would be defined in terms of navigating existential nihilism and meaningful self-actualization not unlike we navigate our more fundamental needs.

In other words, the post scarcity world will be just like high school forever? Ugh.