It's a good question, and answering it brings us to what could be uncomfortable conclusion. When there are simply not enough jobs to employ everyone in society, which it seems like where we're going with a service economy and one tending towards automation, the economic system of capitalism as it was devised in the 19th century simply is not going to work. Back then, we needed everyone to work to function and progress as a society. The vast majority of people made something. Now we're the opposite.Ihateregistering1 said:I'm totally lost as to how this would even function. If everyone is just given money to live without having to actually work, why would anyone ever work? Hell, to take it a step further: if everyone decides they're not going to work, who is going to produce the goods and services necessary to actually keep people alive?
The uncomfortable truth is that socialism and forms of communism is the only way out of this. What will bring it on is not some working class revolution, with everyone pissed off at fat cats, it will happen because there is literally no other option.
What it will "look like" will be that some people will have a "base standard of living" and those that contribute, in whatever way that might be, will get a higher standard of living. There is still incentive for those that want to attain more to work and provide value to society, without punishing those that don't want to slave away at two jobs with minimum wage at a job that contributes little to society in order to just eat. The ideas of working to produce income which is then taxed to provide for government services are ideas that will have to be rethought at their most fundamental levels.
And yeah, that scares the shit out of people who have both been told and have told others about the virtues of capitalism and work ethic, as well as more esoteric ideas of individualism and self-sufficiency. I'm not saying this because I'm some radical communist and grinning over the idea of it being inevitable, in fact it will likely be a painful transition that is going to have a lot of drawbacks.