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Fast forward a century or so, to a future when it is no longer necessary for human beings to be directly involved in production of goods and services. There would just be a few drone-like caretakers and overseers to read the meters and make sure the mechanical processes are humming along, and turn one off it is looks like it wants to control the universe. How should the wealth be distributed?
If you support the ideal of 1% owning most of the wealth, who gets to be the 1%? If 10 or 20 or 30% (or entire continents) still live marginalized lives in want and relative poverty, who will be the people who will, through their own fault, be designated as the bottom feeders, since "lazy" and "irresponsible" and "unwilling to work hard" will no longer be an identifiable contrasting color, but will apply equally to everyone. What, then, would be the motive for striving for universal plenty, if it's still just for a few?
Or has economic inequality become so hard-wired into our thinking, will we cling to the infallibility of the economic popes and persevere with unequal distribution, and force some to live in poverty, even when there is glorious bounty to be effortlessly had by all? Will we need to create, like in India, an inescapable "untouchable" class within our society, who are untouchable merely because they are called untouchable?
In a future without labor, what would an economy look like?
It'll never happen.
There will always be labor jobs of some sort.
What might happen though, and probably should, is for people with skill and education
to do more of the labor work. The trick is in still being able to pay them well enough.
It'll never happen.
There will always be labor jobs of some sort.
What might happen though, and probably should, is for people with skill and education
to do more of the labor work. The trick is in still being able to pay them well enough.
I agree. A world without any labor would be a very dangerous place.
What I think will happen is a severely bifucated society, with a few very rich at the top (perhaps up to 5% of the population, but no more) and the rest barely scraping by in total poverty, living off the dole and/or whatever work they can find. This will probably lead to widespread communist revolutions around the world, as the masses tire of the rich having everything while they're being left out in the cold. This probably wouldn't be such a bad thing, if the wealth is truely distributed among the population, kinda like a national dividend. The rich people would put up a heck of a fight though, I'm sure.
Before we get to that point, however, I foresee a lot of wars being fought - gotta do something with all those idle bodies...lol.
I agree. A world without any labor would be a very dangerous place.
We can all have freedom like Nancy Pelosi said. Joe Biden would be happy too, all women can stay home. Pelosi says there’s nothing to worry about because everything is sunshine and rainbows.
As jobs disappear, the world's economic powers will continue to move towards socialism.
There's no point in capitalism when there's no more capital. When nearly everything is automated, it makes sense for the public (everyone) to control the means of production.
It'd not happen. There will be a continuing shrinking of employment, but technology always creates new jobs and demands new skills.
The coming conflict is that as more people become poor in the U.S. and as the poor population grow into the majority, the U.S. will inevitably become a welfare state. Just as the business community want more cheaper labor, they are creating more people who will be against them.
There will probably be a stronger divide between the productive and skilled population and the rest.
If the U.S. population decides that they want public control of the means of production, they will face several things. One, many businesses will go out of business. Two, a lot of businesses will move away. There won't be the means of production to control. It'll be empty buildings and left-behind calendars. They may discover great wealth to redistribute (but not necessarily creating more). They may discover that they are left without much to redistribute. By then, skilled immigrants won't come to the U.S., businesses and industries collapse, and skilled people move away. Suddenly, people will realize that the U.S. has been a place where the poor flooded in and the rich departed.
For a very long time, Americans have been living in total denial and total illusion. They take for granted the byproducts of prosperity. They just want those byproducts, but they no longer want to work for prosperity and are no longer given much opportunity to work for prosperity. The thing is, the business community has long abandoned the U.S. This next fifty years will be a time when Americans watch every one of these byproducts vanishes.
As much as middle class Americans like to flaunt their international cosmopolitan awareness and make fun of poor peasants, these Americans are undoubtedly nation-state-based Americans. It'll be their tragedy. The Republicans who they think are stupid and un-global are the ones who have the means to live a global life and escape the coming fall of the U.S. Once patient, polite, entitled middle-class Americans will end up in similar economic situations and fight in extremely tight labor markets with "the poor" they once disdained. Their two parties sold them, and they chanted slogans and counted profits for these two parties. It's all illusion. It's all planned since the 1970s.
Last edited by Costaexpress; 03-06-2014 at 09:15 PM..
The good paying jobs created today require high intelligence and skillsets beyond the ability of most people (engineers, computer scientists, etc). Most average people will end up on the dole (or if there is no welfare) living in dire poverty like in the third world.
At one time a factory might of employed hundreds of people. Today a corporation might have one opening for a computer programmer with thousands of applicants.
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