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Some of us have been commenting on robots but not in this context, rather in the context of Japan with a decades long chronic unemployment problem and an aging population. It is my belief that Japan will elect not to flood the country with illiterate, unemployable immigrants but to continue to automate.

I think this is the right course and it is also the right course for America. The problem is in the long run political rather than technological because robots will undeniably put lower skilled people out of work even as it creates high paying jobs for high skilled innovators. The Democrat party, and increasingly the Republican Party, will demagogue this situation and insist that the government solve these dislocations. The unintended consequences resulting will no doubt impose a very heavy burden on the economy and take a severe toll on individual liberty.

Even worse, the Democrat party is preparing to flood our country with tens of millions of illiterate and unskilled workers who will now have to compete not just with Americans for jobs but with American robots for jobs. If the dislocations becomes severe enough we have the raw tinder for spontaneous combustion, a situation desirable to anyone who seeks to fundamentally transform America.

For conservatives the challenge will be to find a way to maintain opportunity in an increasingly complex and technologically challenging world for our aging population and for our broader society with an utterly failed educational system. Wealth will be created by machines and distributed according to capital and technical know-how, leaving millions adrift. If we do not want the government to take over the distribution of those profits, we better come up with some creative solutions that preserve freedom, give the technologically challenged a stake in the political system without making them dependent, yet leaving undisturbed incentives for the creative to do their thing.

Good points where we might be headed to some sort of system/to where ideology will not matter. We know the left has poor answers so far on this one but I really don't find our side capable of addressing this one either.

I think first we need to limit immigration to near zero with an exception for spouses and asylum seekers. Close the borders down for 5 or 10 years, longer maybe.

After that, out of pragmatism, being a realist, we might have to consider things that are generally against what some of us believe. If robots take more jobs, we will at some point have to consider a living guaranteed wage enough for a basic house/apartment, car, living, medical and so on. Still as grandma says, "idle hands are the Devil's workshop." So maybe another idea it to limit robot use by law to where they are restricted to jobs too hazardous for people ala "Battlestar Galactica" (the 1978 novel). In short, if a human could do it, then the robot is outlawed. Although not by law, but more due to population pressure, India prefers to use men with shovels to dig ditches than machinery when they can.

Well, there is always this option, "sabotage," where in 1803, FRench weavers threw their shoes (sabot) into the mechanical looms of the day thus making a name for themselves and becoming the origin for the word.

Come to think of it, the Romans had excellent opportunities to advance things towards some sort of mechanized industrial revolution but did not, human labor was abundant and there were lots of people, for that era, around. There was no need to. What really got the industrial revolution was the lack of human labor from the wars and Black Death in the 1300 to 1600's although it took some time to kick off.

We are headed to uncharted waters and not ready as a society. Civilizations, in my theory (I believe we might have had one or two technical civilizations on this planet before ours), when they reach a certain point, there is a race between technology and the morals to use it as well as to get into space before at some point there is a trigger where it gets knocked back. Think of the Tower of Babel or the story of Atlantis. This will add just one more lynch pin that can be pulled where the whole thing comes down.

If God would come down and give me a button to stop this as well as bring down the internet and cellphones, thus returning us to what we had in the 1970's and 1980's, I would most likely press it to give society and morals more time to catch up.