That’s what’s scary. I think if most jobs are replaced by robots or automation, there will only be two ways to deal with it. One way, like in the book version of “Battlestar Galactica,” outlaw robots for jobs that can be done by people, except for very hazardous ones such as inspecting the inside of atomic reactors for example. The other way, well, hate to say it, but everyone get a guaranteed living wage, most likely funded by taxation of the profits made by the robots. The downside of that is people will be idle and the old saying, idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” applies. BTW, the other night, I saw a 1964 episode of “The Twilight Zone” where the owner of a factory replaced all his workers with automation and one foreman went crazy and busted up the control computer while yelling about the dignity of work that is needed for every man. Later on, the owner is replace by a robot, played by “Robbie the Robot” from “Forbidden Planet.”
Well, that’s about it. I imagine during the next twenty years we may have laws passed like were recently passed in some European country, that would make it illegal for anyone to work more than, say, 20 hours a week, so as to share the remaining jobs (which jobs will also diminish in time, so this measure would just be kicking the can down the road).
This would mean that one could not better oneself by working longer hours, in the hopes of investing the extra money so gained or in saving to start a business, not that there’d be any kind of business left to start.
We will be faced with the loss of our economic freedom.
This will be a major crisis and I suspect it’s already started.
Capitalism, free enterprise, will have destroyed itself.
It will be a socialist’s dream: no rich, no poor, no individualism. Everyone equal and equally miserable.
so no sir, I no longer cheer technological “progress” and I am on strike when it comes to using it.
And sure, maybe it’s futile to resist—but it’s the principle of the thing.