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In a less humorous vein... a minority can't live some totally detached life, robots or no. The situation will self-correct - economically, democratically, or violently.
What would the "self-correcting" mechanism be?
The elimination of the "useless" would be completely natural and economically optimal for the system. Democracy has very well proven to be a joke. And good luck with violence. We'd just kill each other. Anyone deemed a real threat will be incarcerated as a terrorist. And held indefinitely without charge if necessary.
So you are suggesting we should all be kicked out of the house at 18, naked and penniless and expected to "fend for ourselves"? That's the ultimate in self sufficiency.
I wasn't kicked out naked but had to work for my living costs and schooling expenses. My mom did kick in $100 per quarter (tuition was $88/quarter, minumum wage was $1.25) for the first two years but i had to pay for everything else including food, rent, books, etc.
With hard work and living frugally, we are now retired somewhat comfortably. If i could do it coming from an abusive home, then anyone can. It did help that i was college material. My husband couldnt afford to attend as his dad passed away and he had to help out his mom. But, he worked hard and together we built a life. So, no excuses.
The elimination of the "useless" would be completely natural and economically optimal for the system. Democracy has very well proven to be a joke. And good luck with violence. We'd just kill each other. Anyone deemed a real threat will be incarcerated as a terrorist. And held indefinitely without charge if necessary.
Since we're into technocratic suggestions, I will point out that Robert Heinlein said "never hand the problem of overpopulation to a mathematician (he'd just shoot half of them)." Optimal solutions that don't depend on genocide are probably more optimal than those that do.
We either negotiate our way to a better system with population participation (something like democracy), or we change the operating policies to reflect reality (something like economic reform) or we all shoot as many of each other as possible and hope there are pieces to pick up.*
Since I don't believe you can legislate change and would prefer not to have to stack five billion corpses, my efforts are on economic reform - and I mean reform way past tinkering with the details.
Also called "windmills," but I enjoy tilting at them.
* Which, unfortunately, is the road we seemed to have swerved drunkenly onto.
Optimal solutions that don't depend on genocide are probably more optimal than those that do.
From the standpoint of whom?
If you read any of the robotics thread, I predicted that the useless masses would be mollified at a low level of resource consumption, and encouraged not to breed. But that still relies on charity, which I don't believe is a defining feature of the megarich.
I hope for better. Much better. We will have the opportunity for greater freedom than we've ever known; prosperous and interesting lives as a birthright. Do what you like. But we need to open our eyes and *collectively* fight for that outcome while we still (theoretically at least) have a chance.
But the propaganda and misinformation, antagonistic and divisive level of discourse, and utter lack of cooperation on everything, are not encouraging.
Maybe I'm just a mush-headed, soft-hearted bleeding lib'ral, but solutions that don't involve the extermination of some large part of the population appeal to me.
We need not be "equally poor." It's just as within reach to be "equally rich." Have you ever looked at what distributing the wealth of the 1% to the rest of the population means on an individual and family level? I don't advocate any such distribution (by force or fiat)... but an economic system that blunts such transuranic density of wealth would benefit well over 99% of us.
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