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Automation will have to balance against income. Automated McDogmeat's are going to sell burgers to no one if there's no income to be had from customers wanting to eat a tasty McDogmeat's sammich because no one can afford to eat anything but their state dispensed Sustenance Allowance.
The present 'wealth inequality' we see now is amateur hour at a karaoke bar compared to where it will be when wide-scale automation is in place.
What do you do with 250 million-plus unemployable 'Muricans? Kit them out as cannon fodder to zerg the western hemisphere? Feed them to Logan's Run? Implement a dystopian welfare state? Train them ... to do, what, exactly?
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What do you do with 250 million-plus unemployable 'Muricans? Kit them out as cannon fodder to zerg the western hemisphere? Feed them to Logan's Run? Implement a dystopian welfare state? Train them ... to do, what, exactly?
In the world of Mega City One, the purpose of Education was for the population to learn what to do with it's enforced off time given that the 90 plus percent unemployment rate would mean that many of them would never get off subsistence.
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In the world of Mega City One, the purpose of Education was for the population to learn what to do with it's enforced off time given that the 90 plus percent unemployment rate would mean that many of them would never get off subsistence.
What do you do with 250 million-plus unemployable 'Muricans? Kit them out as cannon fodder to zerg the western hemisphere? Feed them to Logan's Run? Implement a dystopian welfare state? Train them ... to do, what, exactly?
Since I'm not familiar with that particular setting, what are the unemployed masses doing with their education?
One imagines either (a) the positive result being basically what we see in Wall-E; or (b) horrible lives almost too grim-dark to contemplate being the more likely outcome.
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Automation will have to balance against income. Automated McDogmeat's are going to sell burgers to no one if there's no income to be had from customers wanting to eat a tasty McDogmeat's sammich because no one can afford to eat anything but their state dispensed Sustenance Allowance.
In a planned economy sure, but we don't have one of those.
What happens is that it WOULD be in everyone's best interest if there were workers with enough pocket change to buy burgers.
But the optimum strategy for any individual company is to give it's workers as little money as possible and let the OTHER businesses pay their workers more to buy your stuff.
if you can cut half your white collar work force and don't you'll be out of business competing against people who do.
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Or in the case of the original, hypothetical, and non-existent "tragedy of the commons", the community.
Ours is run by the person with the most money, so... the person who cut their workforce by 40%.
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Well yes. Now that we've long discarded the social structures that worked for centuries, we need more formal legal government structures to handle the things we hold in common.
We have one of those. But if making the most money not only gets you more money, but also lets you decide who should use the commons more your government has exacerbated a problem they exist to mitigate.
Continum here we come!
I don't think he's disagreeing with you BNW.
I agree with you that that's a problem as well. What do you think a system that's solved that problem would look like?