Something I've been thinking a lot about is the transition into post scarcity and how we need to dramatically alter the incentive structures and payment allocations.
I've been asking this question for about a decade and still have no good solutions: "What do you do when x% of your workforce is unemployable?" (being that x% of jobs are removed without replacement. Imagine sophisticated and cheap robots. Or if needed, magic)
This is a thought experiment, so your answer can't be "there'll be new jobs." Even if you believe that's what'll happen in real life, it's not in bounds of the thought experiment. It is best to consider multiple values of x because it is likely to change and that would more reflect a post scarcity transition. It is not outside the realms of possibility that in the future you can obtain food, shelter, and medical care for free or at practically no cost. "Too cheap to meter" if you will.
I'll give you two answers that I've gotten that I find interesting. I do not think either are great and they each have issues. 1) jobs programs. Have people do unnecessary jobs simply so they create work wherein we can compensate them. 2) Entertainment. People are, on average, far more interested in watching people play chess against one another than computers, despite the computer being better. So reasons that this ,,might,, not go away.
Something I've been thinking a lot about is the transition into post scarcity and how we need to dramatically alter the incentive structures and payment allocations.
I've been asking this question for about a decade and still have no good solutions: "What do you do when x% of your workforce is unemployable?" (being that x% of jobs are removed without replacement. Imagine sophisticated and cheap robots. Or if needed, magic)
This is a thought experiment, so your answer can't be "there'll be new jobs." Even if you believe that's what'll happen in real life, it's not in bounds of the thought experiment. It is best to consider multiple values of x because it is likely to change and that would more reflect a post scarcity transition. It is not outside the realms of possibility that in the future you can obtain food, shelter, and medical care for free or at practically no cost. "Too cheap to meter" if you will.
I'll give you two answers that I've gotten that I find interesting. I do not think either are great and they each have issues. 1) jobs programs. Have people do unnecessary jobs simply so they create work wherein we can compensate them. 2) Entertainment. People are, on average, far more interested in watching people play chess against one another than computers, despite the computer being better. So reasons that this ,,might,, not go away.