The core of the issue isn't "Rewarding laziness", but "Ensuring a life with dignity", and "not punishing unfortunates for things beyond their control"

If entire industries can be wiped out of the employment sector in the matter of a few years all because a few CEOs and shareholders decide that their profits are more important than the livelihoods of those they previously employed, then we as a society have issues we need to address. And this is not remotely "The robots took our jobs!" because the robots should be taking those jobs. The key point is addressing the livelihoods of those displaced, and why society as a whole allows those handful of CEOs and shareholders to wield that amount of power without compassion.

Lets face it, robotics can probably do a far better job at shipping can humans can. Getting humans out of warehouses means there aren't any humans to be run over by forklifts. Putting a well designed robot in charge of moving pallets around in a warehouse means a far less likely chance that a tired forklift driver backs into the corner post of a shelving unit and brings the whole badly designed thing down on himself and a few other workers. Self driving trucks don't get tired. Self monitoring trains don't miscount the number of cars they pick up, and if they do then the fault gets explored and the bug fixed so it never happens again.

Replacing the entire manufacturing and shipping industry with robotics is clearly a good thing. However humanity is going to need to step up sooner rather than later and acknowledge that we have developed technology to a point where there is no justification in the disparity of livelihood that we currently have. There is no need for the stress and the worry over the future that we place on so many, and the lack of access to the basic needs that allows someone to better themselves.

Well here's the crux of the difference in perspectives here: you seem to believe that there will be service oriented jobs that people can transition to whereas I don't really see that remaining as an option in the near long term.

No, I think we just disagree with what the "near long term" is. :)

I think it's also an error to assume that every human either needs to (a) be in a full-time job, or (b) supported with a similar amount of income by others with such a job. It's a historical aberration - most hunter-gatherer societies would work for half as long, because there's nothing intrinsic to human existence that requires so much labour. Unfortunately we have the current situation in the West where homes, food, clothing, and utilities are relatively scarce, and traded at market rates that reflect their scarcity.

But, that will change. For some reason, people are only seeing one part of the automation equation - the future loss of today's jobs - without seeing the other part - massively reduced prices due to not having to pay salaries (on top of other productivity gains). If the cost of living drops significantly, you might expect people to work fewer hours, and to spread the reduced labour demand around. The Western world is actually already seeing this (although maybe not so much in the USA!) and there is good reason to believe that we can end up better off than our ancestors, being very productive and working very few hours. The tricky bit is wealth management, i.e. ensuring that people with vested interests aren't able to monopolise wealth and assets along the way.

The tricky bit is wealth management, i.e. ensuring that people with vested interests aren't able to monopolise wealth and assets along the way.

Given the current level of wealth disparity in the world, I would suggest that there is a rather strong argument that we've already failed terribly on that point.

Sure. For the purposes of this conversation though, I think the important thing is to ensure that the benefits of automation drive down prices - e.g. companies competing to offer you the cheapest driverless car - rather than, for example, one company owning all the driverless cars and being able to charge top dollar for them, forever.

But the heart of the long term capitalist economy still lies in "People have jobs that a human actually does".

There is this rather awkward gap between "Humans are doing the majority of 'jobs', and most people are employed", and "AI and robots are doing basically everything, and any capitalist with any sense just buys/builds what they need to do things"... What exactly are we going to pay humans to do in the future if we develop computers that can do the jobs and think like a human, but don't get bored, tired, or start to dream of 'other things in life' that distract them from their job?

Capital and money flow are already creating budget crunches, and completely needless suffering because large sections of society want "More Ultimately Meaningless Magic Points" assigned to their name in spreadsheets. We could just sit back and let the market pressures sort things out eventually, or we could start a movement toward actually getting people to talk about how we might be able to do something far better now or in the very near future, such that we all have far better lives.

But the heart of the long term capitalist economy still lies in "People have jobs that a human actually does".

There is this rather awkward gap between "Humans are doing the majority of 'jobs', and most people are employed", and "AI and robots are doing basically everything, and any capitalist with any sense just buys/builds what they need to do things"... What exactly are we going to pay humans to do in the future if we develop computers that can do the jobs and think like a human, but don't get bored, tired, or start to dream of 'other things in life' that distract them from their job?

Capital and money flow are already creating budget crunches, and completely needless suffering because large sections of society want "More Ultimately Meaningless Magic Points" assigned to their name in spreadsheets. We could just sit back and let the market pressures sort things out eventually, or we could start a movement toward actually getting people to talk about how we might be able to do something far better now or in the very near future, such that we all have far better lives.

This pretty much gets at what I'm trying to say as well. Sure the stuff people need or want will get cheaper but if they aren't employed/getting paid they can't have it no matter how cheap it is.

Well here's the crux of the difference in perspectives here: you seem to believe that there will be service oriented jobs that people can transition to whereas I don't really see that remaining as an option in the near long term.

No, I think we just disagree with what the "near long term" is. :)

I think it's also an error to assume that every human either needs to (a) be in a full-time job, or (b) supported with a similar amount of income by others with such a job. It's a historical aberration - most hunter-gatherer societies would work for half as long, because there's nothing intrinsic to human existence that requires so much labour. Unfortunately we have the current situation in the West where homes, food, clothing, and utilities are relatively scarce, and traded at market rates that reflect their scarcity.

But, that will change. For some reason, people are only seeing one part of the automation equation - the future loss of today's jobs - without seeing the other part - massively reduced prices due to not having to pay salaries (on top of other productivity gains). If the cost of living drops significantly, you might expect people to work fewer hours, and to spread the reduced labour demand around. The Western world is actually already seeing this (although maybe not so much in the USA!) and there is good reason to believe that we can end up better off than our ancestors, being very productive and working very few hours. The tricky bit is wealth management, i.e. ensuring that people with vested interests aren't able to monopolise wealth and assets along the way.

I agree, but like I said, automation is great. We want more of it. I just believe that things will get cheaper, but people won't have jobs to get those things no matter how cheap they are. There's nothing wrong with not having a job in the future society where everything is automated, but if they still have to buy things and don't have money to buy with, that's an issue.

As an aside, something we haven't considered yet : If "Camp B", as I put it, is right, and in the interim we don't find a "contigency plan"...there is still a job that humans, and mainly *women*, or children, can do to ensure survival/extra income, a service they can provide to the "elite", and that can't be automated.

It won't be very pretty if that's one of the very few options left to them, in a much larger and severe scale than what happens today, will it?

...a service they can provide to the "elite", and that can't be automated.

Not everyone's into that, but I'm sure it *could* be automated! :P

The biggest barriers to that are the costs of energy and the costs of transportation.

If you can solve the distribution problem the entire world will be in your metaphorical debt and the world will be transformed.

Some regions have enough clean water that they use culinary water for irrigating crops. Other regions have no semblance of clean water.

Some regions have enough food that they don't bother to pick it all, that they throw out perfectly good food at collection, at shipping, and again at the marketplace, throwing out wonderful produce because it doesn't look pretty enough. Other regions of the world people would be excited to find moldy fruit and bug-bitten veggies while searching for calories. I've read that currently there is global production of food that is enough to feed 2x the global population, but about 1/3 of the world is unable to get the food due to their locations.

Some regions of the world have healthcare where anything that has even the slight suspicion of being non-sterile it is thrown out and incinerated; any medication that was opened and cannot have its source traced back to the manufacturing plant for every pill and every vial is thrown out. Other regions of the world if the bandage has been washed out it is good enough for the next patient, and if you happen to get medicines that are labeled as the ones you need the physicians give them with the hope they weren't too diluted in the black market, or were actually the right medication. Location is the key factor.

Some regions of the world complain that there are hundreds of TV channels with nothing to watch, and nothing on their video streaming system looks interesting, sports equipment gathers dust in the garage. Other regions of the world people struggle for entertainment, they make a ball out of tied-together rags and play whatever games they can imagine. Again, location is the key.

Some regions of the world have more empty homes and empty apartments than they know what to do with. Other regions of the world people live in garbage dumps because they cannot get housing. Location and moving people to where there is an abundance of supply.

Solve that problem, solve the problem of getting the goods people need to the people who need them, or instead migrating people in need to the locations of the items.

The cost of getting things around the cost of the energy to make and create things, this is the bulk of the problem. If that can be solved by anything it would be the biggest change for all of humanity.

It wouldn't even need to be bringing people up all the way to the same quality of life. If somehow grocery stores in rich countries could take their discarded foods, their trash, and have them transported to starving people in poor nations; if somehow the culinary water from rich locations used to water crops could be exchanged with the thick and rich brown water used for drinking water in poor places; if the slightly questionable medical gear discarded from rich medical facilities could be transported to desperate poor locations; if someone could solve the global transportation problem the world could be transformed for the better.

If somehow automation could do that, if a series of drones and airships could quickly and efficiently move object that are effectively waste in a rich country to places where they are valuable life-supporting objects while they are still in good quality, that type of automation of transforming trash to treasure would uplift the world.

As I wrote above, it is about HOW the transformation works. If the actions bring us closer to a blissful utopia, it is wonderful even if it is a painful transformation. If the actions bring us closer to dystopian nightmares, let's not go there.

There is another wild and crazy idea to solve the food transit problem that doesn't involve building massive futuristic transit systems to move cast off food: Help the over population of low production regions move TO the food, and/or help stabilize and secure the low production regions.