[Chainmail]

Unfortunately, we are staring at a future where most jobs will be replaced by machines. As it is now, look at how completely Customer Service has been replaced by automated - and irritating - phone response systems. Look at how many assembly line manufacturing jobs have been replaced by 24/7 nonunion robotic assembly systems. We even have Google and others pushing to automate driving, which is being pushed as a "labor saving and safety" system but really will be pressed into long haul trucking first (24/7 driving, no rest breaks, lower costs) and then into personal transportation which will neatly allow complete government control and limitation.

We are even examining our eventual mechanization of combat, with unmanned everything, using autonomous direction to eliminate human interference and disruption. There will be some of you who will be dismissive of this but we can't afford to be behind the rest of the world, particularly China, in this area of technological development.

The question really becomes, what will we do with people after this? Except for the exceptionally creative, there will be no work at all. We have that situation in a sense already in our urban areas. People with little education and few prospects receive subsidies to live a modest life and not hurt anybody. That obviously doesn't work.

Our "captains of industry" have adopted certain stopgaps to make sure that the money flows to themselves without any undue pressure to plan for the future by exporting many jobs overseas to China and other sweatshops or by rapidly importing "undocumented" and underpaid labor from Mexico and the rest of Central America.

All those actions do is delay the inevitable and make our country ripe for conflict.

The real question is, are there any leaders in our country, anywhere looking at where this is heading and what will have to do to make sure that there places in the workforce for our children?

[Sherman Logan]

I think you and I are on the same page.

This is THE problem of this century and nobody is talking about it.

The difference being that in the automated world the wealth will be available for most to live far above what we would now consider “a modest life.”

Yet there is no guarantee that this will lead to a happier life for most. In fact, limited evidence to date indicates quite the opposite.

[rbg81]

There will always be work to do, but fewer and fewer people will need be engaged in it. Increasing numbers of people will be put on the dole, with just enough to subsist. They will spend their days medicated (high), playing video games, using social media, or otherwise entertaining themselves (as that will be cheap). There will probably be lots of educational options too, but only a few will take advantage as doing nothing is the path of least resistance. So, only the top 20% of motivated people will work. Everyone else will fritter their lives away.

There you have it.