In the first place, what allows populations to stay where food and water are hard to get, OR what prevents them from moving? Shouldn't people be naturally migrating if they can increase their access to food/water?

In the first place, what allows populations to stay where food and water are hard to get, OR what prevents them from moving? Shouldn't people be naturally migrating if they can increase their access to food/water?

Well they are. Immigration to Western nations lol. Which is another large point of contention that many are very afraid of.

Trying to solve that distribution process issue is a wasteful endeavor as it will get exponentially more complex/costly with time. It's better to encourage local agriculture/genetically modify strains of food that can thrive in those areas so that they can get their industry started (again).

Automation can only go so far. It still needs human intervention to make automation useful. What if the machines break down, what if the code is outdated. How to make automation itself adapt to the change in the way human lives?

All of that is easily addressable by automation. Machine breaks down? Throw it away or get another machine to repair it.

Code outdated? It won't be. Machines are already learning to code and that is only going to get better in the future.

Right now, humans are losing to a machine at poker. The machine is improving its game, learning to bluff,etc and it's trouncing some of the best poker players on the planet.

The question isn't "if" machines can do 99.9% of human jobs, it's "when".

Automation can only go so far. It still needs human intervention to make automation useful. What if the machines break down, what if the code is outdated. How to make automation itself adapt to the change in the way human lives?

All of that is easily addressable by automation. Machine breaks down? Throw it away or get another machine to repair it.
Code outdated? It won't be. Machines are already learning to code and that is only going to get better in the future.

Code also has the relatively unique property that once you create it, you can copy it an unlimited number of times with zero human labor. And it can be distributed at nearly the speed of light!

This means that you can automate a billion identical devices with code written by only a thousand developers.

Eventually machines will be able to write our code for us, but it's already highly efficient as-is.

Automation can only go so far. It still needs human intervention to make automation useful. What if the machines break down, what if the code is outdated. How to make automation itself adapt to the change in the way human lives?

All of that is easily addressable by automation. Machine breaks down? Throw it away or get another machine to repair it.
Code outdated? It won't be. Machines are already learning to code and that is only going to get better in the future.

Code also has the relatively unique property that once you create it, you can copy it an unlimited number of times with zero human labor. And it can be distributed at nearly the speed of light!

This means that you can automate a billion identical devices with code written by only a thousand developers.

Eventually machines will be able to write our code for us, but it's already highly efficient as-is.

I feel like that programmers will remain for a good amount of time before getting replaced by machines. But yea, we are headed to a society where much of the work will be done by machines.

I feel like that programmers will remain for a good amount of time before getting replaced by machines.

Definitely. Programming uses most of our mental abilities. That stuff is tremendously complicated and will take a long time to fully automate.

On the plus side, I'd wager what we'll see with programming automation will be iterative refinement (better tools, better compilers, better languages) instead of all of a sudden "well, we finished AI, everyone's out of a job!".

I'm guessing we'll have a lot more time to find jobs in other fields or adapt to new roles in our existing fields than the poor truck drivers and airline pilots that are going to get suddenly automated out of existence.

distribution quote

Why, just why, is everybody concerned with the distribution problem? If you teach people to produce what is needed locally, no distribution is necessary.

It's not like the climate in e.g. Africa was forbidding agriculture. Sure, there's deserts in some parts, but they have a surface which is several times the size of all Europe which could yield three harvests per year. It's just that nobody bothers planting. It's not like having clean water (or water at all) is magic, either. You just need to, well, do something.

The problem is not finding every faster/better/techier ways of distributing stuff, but to teach people to produce what they need. Teach them that digging a well is a better investment of your time than killing your neighbours because they're from another tribe or because they pray to the wrong god. Teach them that cultivating animals yields more meat and is more sustainable than poaching and killing the last remaining few of a species. Teach them you can't cure AIDS by eating an elephant penis. Teach them that they don't need a cellphone with facebook built-in (that's equally true for many US and EU people). Teach them that they should be producers, not consumers.

We are (deliberately) teaching people to become the dumbest piece of consumer vermin. Don't decide when the window shades open, your house knows better than you. Don't drive your car yourself. Don't meet people, use facebook. Don't cook, there's instant meals loaded with corn starch for half the price. We are teaching people to be dumb and useless.

Compare what the world looked like 15 years ago and what it looks like today. Everything has to be networked, everything has to be "smart" and autonomous, there is hardly any competence any more, and if there is they can't do much. There is nothing you can't put on the cloud, there's nothing you can't do with your iPhone, even if it doesn't make the slightest sense.
Nowadays, governments are afraid there might be an internet worm or something, and then there will be no electricity or water for two or three weeks. Excuse me? How can "internet fail" mean there is no water coming from the tube? But sure enough, if everything, like e.g. pumps has to be controlled via some super-smart internet shit with no way of someone intervening manually if something happens, then that might just happen.

Why, just why, is everybody concerned with the distribution problem? If you teach people to produce what is needed locally, no distribution is necessary.

Because it is one of the biggest barriers to the fundamental "basic human quality of life" issue of the thread.

Globally there are more than enough resources for everyone to have an amazing 'basic' quality of life. The problem is getting stuff to all the people.

Not everything can be produced locally. For foods, it is hard to grow crops and raise animals in densely-populated cities. Assorted crops are suited to specific environments. We have an abundance globally, but individual areas cannot easily support all the modern populations.

The other major barrier is energy. One of many good summaries on the topic.

That is at the core of the original question, the idea behind the question. Providing a minimum base income to everyone is to help everyone get a minimum, and hopefully ever-improving, quality of life. Getting everybody all the stuff they need is the fundamental issue. The core things they need are food and water. After that comes things like healthcare and education, even if that education is traditional to their region. It doesn't have to be western healthcare and western education, but still should be accessible to everyone. Hence distribution and energy to everyone, including the poorest people in all the nations. So focusing on the poorest people in the poorest nations gives sub-Saharan Africa.

For an individual nation as a smaller improvement, a minimum guaranteed income is an experiment being tried in several nations.