*sigh* Idiots will be idiots
If everyone automates everything, then nobody will be able to get a job and nobody will be able to buy anything. So what good is a cheap, ever-wakeful workforce that never takes vacations if nobody is buying your products or services? This is something mankind in general will need to face quite soon...
There are several possible ways this will play out:
1. We make working optional - social state kicks in. High taxes and wealth redistribution, but everyone gets a basic income regardless of employment. Most of work is automated anyway, so we all benefit from it. Highly unlikely in the US, possible in the EU.
2. We regulate the use of automation. Set criteria on which jobs may be automated, so things that can be done by people will remain being done by people. A fairly likely scenario, though not quite yet.
3. We do nothing. Automation drives more and more people out of work to the point that a critical mass of disenfranchised is created, and we get a good old fashioned uprising.
4. We do nothing. The lack of purchasing power due to unemployment brings about even more recessions, which keeps happening until another solution is reached or the overall logistical system needed to support high levels of automation breaks down.
5. A vast percentage of population is removed. Population control, wars, disease, climate change, whatever. Surplus workforce is removed, society reforms based on automation to pick up the slack.
All in all, it's bleak in the short term, but not in the long term. Such large scale automation isn't viable in our current economic and social paradigm and the situation will either be resolved by us, or it will resolve itself despite us...
If everyone automates everything, then nobody will be able to get a job and nobody will be able to buy anything. So what good is a cheap, ever-wakeful workforce that never takes vacations if nobody is buying your products or services? This is something mankind in general will need to face quite soon...
There are several possible ways this will play out:
1. We make working optional - social state kicks in. High taxes and wealth redistribution, but everyone gets a basic income regardless of employment. Most of work is automated anyway, so we all benefit from it. Highly unlikely in the US, possible in the EU.
2. We regulate the use of automation. Set criteria on which jobs may be automated, so things that can be done by people will remain being done by people. A fairly likely scenario, though not quite yet.
3. We do nothing. Automation drives more and more people out of work to the point that a critical mass of disenfranchised is created, and we get a good old fashioned uprising.
4. We do nothing. The lack of purchasing power due to unemployment brings about even more recessions, which keeps happening until another solution is reached or the overall logistical system needed to support high levels of automation breaks down.
5. A vast percentage of population is removed. Population control, wars, disease, climate change, whatever. Surplus workforce is removed, society reforms based on automation to pick up the slack.
All in all, it's bleak in the short term, but not in the long term. Such large scale automation isn't viable in our current economic and social paradigm and the situation will either be resolved by us, or it will resolve itself despite us...