[ExI] self driving truck

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tuesday, 1 November 2016, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 8:48 PM, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lubkin at unreasonable.com');>> wrote:
>
> What can humans do to earn their keep is unclear.
>
>
> This "earning one's keep" is a pretty recent notion. For most of human
> history life was about self-sufficiency and very small cooperative groups.
> 7+ billion people won't be able earn a living via manual labor, manual
> skill, or artistic expression in a future where robots can do most of that
> better than humans. So maybe the population will crash dramatically or
> we'll move to a new system where earning a living isn't necessary. Who
> knows? Too say to say how things will shake out.
>

When the robots are doing most things there will be more resources to share
among the 7+ billion, even if each individual is on average less
productive. Ideally, the increased wealth will be shared amongst all. But
another possibility is that the rich may seek to eliminate the
unproductive. Historically, the masses have been potentially useful to the
rich and powerful, however contemptuous they may have been of them: kings
needed subjects, conquerors needed soldiers, capitalists needed workers.
But come the robots, the poor may be seen by the rich as at best a burden,
at worst a threat.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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