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Billionaires don't work? Unearned income? What color is the sky in your world?
I mean, hey, I'm no billionaire. But I've been around enough wealthy people to know that they do indeed work, and typically work longer days than some guy operating a forklift or flipping burgers.
I think he was referring to making your money work for you.
When everyone is equal then the opportunity to work hard is created, and the system succeeds. Likewise, when people are unequal, the system fails. Would you say that our economy has boomed, now that we have ballooning income inequality? Whatever inequality is supposed to beneficially do for us, it's doing it now. How would you say that's working out?
It's not the system that fails or succeeds. It's those operating within & without the system.
It's not realistic to believe everyone will do their fair share of the work for the same rewards as each other. And what a horrible existence that would be. Do the same thing & exist in a lifestyle just like everyone else? No chance of improving your environment? No reason to learn more or accomplish more or create anything. Why would people work harder when they are going to be rewarded with the same as the guy who doesn't work harder? Why would you want to take away people's enthusiasm for learning, creating, discovering, inventing...all the things that make life exciting for most & have led to healthier & improved lives?
I don't understand this kind of thinking. We are created equal. At birth. It's up to us, as individuals to take it from there. God has created us as equals (for the most part), not the government.
It's not the system that fails or succeeds. It's those operating within & without the system.
It's not realistic to believe everyone will do their fair share of the work for the same rewards as each other. And what a horrible existence that would be. Do the same thing & exist in a lifestyle just like everyone else? No chance of improving your environment? No reason to learn more or accomplish more or create anything. Why would people work harder when they are going to be rewarded with the same as the guy who doesn't work harder? Why would you want to take away people's enthusiasm for learning, creating, discovering, inventing...all the things that make life exciting for most & have led to healthier & improved lives?
I don't understand this kind of thinking. We are created equal. At birth. It's up to us, as individuals to take it from there. God has created us as equals (for the most part), not the government.
Have you never heard of being born with a birth defect, or just being born to a poor family or an abusive father? How can you think we're born equal? That's absurd.
Likewise, how can a system not succeed or fail? Would you say every government in the world, now or ever, was equally amenable to success? Feudalism was a great system for entrepreneurs, serfs were just coincidentally too lazy to better themselves?
Contrary to some TED-talk propagandists, humans are still cheaper than machines in a whole lot of industries. We *could* create machines to do a bunch of stuff, but it's prohibitively expensive. Take clothing, for example. Still a lot of human input in that because it's much cheaper to pay some Bangladeshis peanuts than it is to invest millions into the software and robot technology to make automated clothing factories.
The problem is that our resources are starting to be distributed in a more and more inequitable way. That's a reversal from the situation since WWII.
When you pull the string tight enough, it will eventually snap, there will be a revolt and a re-negotiation of the situation. Always happened before, always will. The question is how long will it take?
Contrary to some TED-talk propagandists, humans are still cheaper than machines in a whole lot of industries. We *could* create machines to do a bunch of stuff, but it's prohibitively expensive...
We're talking about the future, when machines are cheap enough to replace humans completely. It will happen sooner than you think. Technology advances at an accelerating rate, because the more advanced technology we have, the faster we can advance technology.
When you pull the string tight enough, it will eventually snap, there will be a revolt and a re-negotiation of the situation. Always happened before, always will. The question is how long will it take?
In the past it would typically be a communist revolution. But this time it's more likely to be a revolution of the 1%, fighting to get rid of the 99%, and using advanced technology to make that fight succeed. Look at their motives: Cleaner Earth, by drastic reduction of population. Less crowding and congestion. They will be able to drive in the Washington DC area at rush hour at full speed as if they were 200 miles from the nearest city. Get rid of ghettos, and use all the land area for upper class real estate. No more war, because, when everyone is rich, there won't be any scarce resources to fight over. Much lower taxes, because there won't be any impoverished people to support. Each person's vote will count for a lot more, because there won't be as many people voting the opposite.
From their point of view, it will be paradise. They probably won't kill off the 99% immediately, but corral them or something, into ghettos in a desert hundreds of miles away from civilization. Then gradually get rid of the 99% by sterilizing all of them so they can't reproduce.
To make it all legal, they can start by making it impossible for the 99% to get jobs, then make it illegal for them to be homeless (vagrancy laws etc) and offer them free housing in the desert ghettos if they accept voluntary sterilization to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The ones that don't comply, they can arrest them for vagrancy, and sentence them to the desert ghettos for their own good. Once they all die of old age, there won't be any left, because there won't be any more children among them.
In the past it would typically be a communist revolution. But this time it's more likely to be a revolution of the 1%, fighting to get rid of the 99%, and using advanced technology to make that fight succeed. Look at their motives: Cleaner Earth, by drastic reduction of population. Less crowding and congestion. They will be able to drive in the Washington DC area at rush hour at full speed as if they were 200 miles from the nearest city. Get rid of ghettos, and use all the land area for upper class real estate. No more war, because, when everyone is rich, there won't be any scarce resources to fight over. Much lower taxes, because there won't be any impoverished people to support. Each person's vote will count for a lot more, because there won't be as many people voting the opposite.
From their point of view, it will be paradise. They probably won't kill off the 99% immediately, but corral them or something, into ghettos in a desert hundreds of miles away from civilization. Then gradually get rid of the 99% by sterilizing all of them so they can't reproduce.
To make it all legal, they can start by making it impossible for the 99% to get jobs, then make it illegal for them to be homeless (vagrancy laws etc) and offer them free housing in the desert ghettos if they accept voluntary sterilization to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The ones that don't comply, they can arrest them for vagrancy, and sentence them to the desert ghettos for their own good. Once they all die of old age, there won't be any left, because there won't be any more children among them.
Really hope this is not how the future turns out... though I do see it as a possibility. I guess I see it in a slightly less dystopian fashion because the rich can only be rich if there are poor people to make them rich... otherwise the poorer rich people would become the poor and the cycle would never end. It's also about power.. they want someone to rule over so they wouldn't want to kill off all of their subjects.
To try to answer OP's question... I believe the only way work will cease to exist in the sense that we know it today is if a One World Government (OWG) is created. This, I believe, is very likely. However, when it will happen is much harder to predict.
A OWG coupled with super efficient 'worker' robots would easily be able to provide basic survival resources to essentially anyone on the planet because all laws and regulations would be uniform. The means of transportation will be easy due to technological advancements. People will likely live in concentrated urban areas in a uniform fashion to ease distribution. However what they receive will be very basic because how would we finance robotic production systems to mass produce luxury items for everyone. Human nature will not change, no one will do things for free.
The majority of Earth's population will simply be idle bodies. They will lack any sense of wealth because they do not have jobs to provide them with currency and they will not be able to barter because they all will have the same possessions. Of course they do not have political power in a OWG because it would be too unruly and unorganized. They will live out their days in a way similar to Winston Smith (from 1984). Just scraping by. They will either be satisfied by the simple entertainment provided to them or they will be disposed of.
99% of the oversight given to this major segment of the population will be provided by robots. (i.e. robotic police, fire, military, etc.) However, I do believe there will always be at least small need for a human presence in the medical field. Though I guess I could be wrong.. just my opinion.
I believe there will be a need for human administrators and 'local' legislators perhaps to run certain regions. They will make up an intermediate segment of the population if you will. They are provided with more materials and power to pay for their 'service'.
Lastly, the large global central government will be composed of the 'elite' so they can run things 'smoothly'. They of course will control the means of production and will be provided with essentially anything they could ever want. After all, they deserve it since they ended poverty and suffering for all of humanity... right?
To keep control it will be simple, either play Big Brother 1984 style and control the population through deceitful tactics like controlling the media and by having 'break downs' in robotic production systems to increase scarcity of products to encourage citizens to behave.
Or simply do so by brute force.
In order for us to distribute things equally without having jobs our entire society would have to be flipped upside down in a 'kumbaya' fashion voluntarily or we will be forced to give up individuality for the greater good. I see the latter to be much more likely than the former. However, truthfully I see us continuing down our path of economic/technological inequality for manyyy decades (perhaps several centuries).
But this time it's more likely to be a revolution of the 1%, fighting to get rid of the 99%, and using advanced technology to make that fight succeed.
I agree. For the first time since civilization began we are entering a time when the oligarchs will no longer depend on the masses for labor and support. Extermination will be the obvious goal. There's just way too much upside to getting rid of the "vermin", for them to waste resources letting us live in prosperity and freedom.
Most likely it will be a long and drawn out extermination, not a quick one. Slow, so it isn't obvious. Nothing that can't be effectively muddled by propaganda. They've already been sticking it to us for 40 years, but the great majority of the population remains oblivious.
Won't be the 1% though... maybe the .01%. And there will still be war. The lust for power will keep that going, until there is only one.
And they won't need to be sterilized. When VR gets more mature, most people will choose to live in pods hooked up to virtual worlds. Maybe they'll have virtual children, but real ones would have no appeal.
Humans have an intellectual limit. We are closer to that limit today than the past days you describe.
...
We've been inventing and innovating since day one, granted. But we have limits on what we can discover.
People have been saying this for as long as things have been invented.
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