First off, I'm curious where you got that the Laws of Robots actually exist. They were made up by Asimov as a convenient way to describe all robot behavior in his books and would require massive AI undertakings to program into even the simplest robot. How simple do you think it is to say "Allow no human to come to harm?" Will my fast food robot stop me from eating a Big Mac because it's not good for my health? Do we program robots as utilitarians or with Kantian ethics?

Maybe you should have taken that in high school. :p

How is that really any different from governments forcing you to pay for programs you don't want to participate in? (Or, for that matter, any situation where you pay for a large object and don't get a choice in every little option. Maybe there's some people out there that would opt not to have a catalytic converter on their car, for example.)

Well, considering I think humans don't have any creative capacity in the first place, and we're all just machines running on really complex conditional statements, then yeah I believe it's 'theoretically' possible, so if we're assuming these quantum leaps in artificial intelligence to allow machines to do certain things, I don't know why we couldn't say we'd suddenly stop making machines better.

This hurts me as an engineer. ;_;

The question was presented for situations that would already require a robot to have advanced reasoning abilities. A McDonalds robot would only be concerned with getting your burger on the counter.

Yes, I have pretty much argued against that before.

That depends on its implementation. You can arm people so that they have no fear of robots, for instance. As for comparing it to Marxism, the problem with a Marxist system was that it required a totalitarian state to forcefully redistribute income in order to make sure all workers were equal. In the case of the above plans, we can distribute that income essentially using the current system. The Negative Income Tax for instance is essentially the opposite of extraction, which Marxist socialism is based around. So now we've come to the prospect of everybody living in slums, which is politically unrealistic considering you've already armed the population in order to get them to accept the transition.

I'm not really seeing the problem. I mean, we don't tax based on ethnicity, right? What's going to be so different about distributing the minimum income?

Fair enough. The problem with that, though, is that it's already practically impossible to bribe members of a society that maintains a minimum of comfortable living. It's easy to maintain ethics when you don't have to worry about eating, or getting cable. So even if one does control the flow of resources, they can't abuse that power since they run the risk of it being seized.

Well then, that would simply be their perogative, wouldn't it? Even if people compete for things like concrete houses, the point is that they no longer have to compete for a comfortable living. Material competition essentially becomes pointless. So I suppose the people wanting to build concrete houses would have to live with the stigma of being wasteful.

Right, and yet we've come to a point where our population growth is seriously declining. The problem with the Industrial Revolution was that the increase in energy extraction enabled us to do more, but measures were never taken that allowed us to do more with less. We've already got the infrastructure to distribute products for mass consumtion, and a serious downturn in breeding. This new turn is entirely feasible.

I was using the Big Mac as an exaggeration, how about in situations such as law enforcement? Personally, I don't care how high the standard of living is for everyone, there are still people out there that get their jollies by fucking with other people, so you'll need someone to enforce your laws (which had been passed by robots, apparently) and do it in a manner consistent with what people would like. I'm not sure how much people would like living with Judge Dredd or ED-209 sitting around outside their door.

And yet you were saying earlier how if someone invents something they would only be doing it for the love of the activity of it, not for the profit. What about the people that want to make a new product so they can have more money than everyone else? Are they allowed to restrict the production of their product so as to make themselves (not society) the most money?

And to your question why people haven't hacked car factories before. It's a little absurd to ask that since to this point those factories aren't quite hackable (you know, lack of any form of connectivity to the outside world and everything), but people have hacked just about everything that's possible to go try and hack 'just for the fun of it'.

Because you can't easily anonymously shut down an automobile factory. If no people exited in the plant and if the plant was linked into an internet, then it would be much easier.

I get that. But who gets to tell the robots what to do? Step 1 of the RICH project says that we first must make robots that replace all people who do jobs. But two people in the same position can do the exact same job in completely different ways and be equally successful. I work in an office with 3 people, I code rather creatively, one of my partners approaches his work through brute force, and another is quite analytical.

So who gets to tell the robots what to do and how to do it? When you get into important positions, like law enforcement, the athiest will be mad if the Christian gets to make the RoboCops and vice versa. Unless you distribute algorithms, in which case you might have robots that aren't as good as others or you have this bizzare society of robots in which writing enough algorithms for them is so complex that it is completely impractical.

But the system doesn't work if you don't replace all jobs. Why would a person in a skilled position say, "Hey, guys, let's start making robots that replace all the low-skill jobs so they don't have to work anymore...even though we have to keep working..."

These are the popular images, but a law-enforcement machine could be made to be much more non-threatening, even non-lethal.

And? So long as people base the economy on money, profit would always be a factor. The difference is now that people don't really need to make a profit, only if they want to.

Yeah, pretty much. There's no reason that factories can't have closed systems.

Well, people, obviously. What type of programming goes into robots would be determined by their demand and political force. Step 1 is not all-encompassing. It's a gradual process in which certain jobs are fased out. When the point comes where people are making police bots and politician drones, there would have to be compromises made in their design to satisfy the concerned. It's not as if a representative society goes down the drain with labor.

Profit. Also, presumably skilled workers would be trying to design machines that replace themselves. Then once they're replaced, they would either do nothing or try and design other machines to replace other jobs for even more profit.

Of course, the one problem is what happens when someone that's just had fun hacking the local factory decides it would be an even better time to try and hack the local police station? Saying you'll make it hackproof doesn't really mean a whole lot, since a motivated individual could just design a machine to do it for them (and then it just comes down to the skill of individual programmers and, oh wait, we're back at people having to do work :( ).

It's not like today's millionare needs to make a profit, but if they've got a way to raise their consumption compared to everyone else, you can be sure that some of them will do their best to do it, and, during that, will have to deprive other people of wealth in some way.



My point was that people are going to go after easier targets that have a larger effect than factories do right now. In the future, if they can get a bigger news story out of figuring out a way to hack a factory, don't you think they'd do it?

One of my biggest problems with this theory is that there's magically enough resources to go around to everyone in the world. Couldn't it be quite possible that there's no way to get everyone's standard of living up to what we'd want?

That, and for someone that's using Asimov's Laws of Robotics in an argument, I'm surprised that you didn't bring up his planet of Solaria in which robots do all the work in the planet and person to person contact is seen as repulsive.

Then again, maybe I just don't like this kinda of utopia because I find the whole idea of it repulsive.

But not everyone loves computer science and robotic engineering which is absolutely required to run this system. It is one thing to make a robot that can adjust itself to properly weld a car door onto a frame. It is something else to amass the manpower it would take to create this army of robotic laborers.

What would happen to Labor Day? :(

It would probably be replaced by Robotic Insurrection Day. :(

Which is a minor problem in the first place. So what if people have to be police officers or politicians? They perform the duties because they want to. I suppose one method to encourage public service would be a Starship Troopers-like system of citizenship in exchange for duty.

It doesn't matter how rich you are, one always needs to make a profit. A fortune can still be lost, and while it may not matter to the CEO that he makes a few hundred thousand more a year, it certainly matters to the company he runs whether or not it generates a profit.

If you don't make a profit, you end up with a deficit. No matter how massive of a fortune you have, it can be whittled away to nothing depending on the expenditures of the owner, and his progeny.

EDIT: you also seem to be operating on a mercantilistic method of reasoning. The world doesn't have a finite amount of wealth, only resources. Simply because Person A gets richer does not mean that Person B gets poorer.

Yes, and on Earth humans outnumbered robots, and robots were seen as repulsive, while in his third book, the numbers were proportionately equal.

The problem with Solaria is that they dedicated a massive amount of resources to a very small number of people, which lead to isolation. We also aren't a pioneering civilization going out into the universe to make it our own. We've live on this planet for millenia, and just because we'd reach a higher standard of living for everybody doesn't mean that we would all of a sudden abandon every social norm.

Yep, it's entirely possible, in fact, probable. Which is why it would still be necessary to go out into outer space and take advantage of its resources. We have worlds-worth of minerals and other resources waiting for us out in the asteroid belt, and we still can't get a man beyond the moon. In an automated society, developing outer space becomes a necessity.

Sure, but that's no reason to resist advancement and adaptation. Like you mentioned before, computer systems are hacked all the time, and yet somehow the global economy hasn't ground to a halt because of it, and we don't stop making increasingly advanced computers.

How so?

As the efficiency of extracting more energy from less material increases, the need for the kind of manpower you're thinking of decreases, perhaps exponentially. Don't think of the present as the measuring stick.

Oh, I'm not thinking about the material, I'm thinking about the programming. Sure, things get faster and faster and faster, but the problem isn't only computational speeds, it's algorithms. And there is no way beyond working with 1s and 0s (or simple numbers for when multiple voltage can be used better). That will never change.

People have to make the systems work after they are created.

The same process is being applied to coding. Do you think you'd be typing on a messageboard this good if we were still coding with machine languages?

Of course not, but the level of abstraction cannot get much higher. We're at the object level (which boards like this don't even use outside of AJAX because it is so goddamn slow), which means that things are being modelled as if they were in a real-world state. We've been heavily at this stage now for about 20 years, and the only two major languages to be released since C++, Java and C#, are based on code easier to write and maintain. They're slow as fuck, but assuming Moore's law keeps working for a while, that might not matter. But, anyway, new paradigms are not forthcoming at this point, the research has gone stagnant.

(Not to mention that the something like this message board was missing up until 10 years ago more because of materials and infrastructure, and not the ability to do something like this.)


Consider this: Microsoft, as of late 2005, had already put in somewhere in the ballpark of 30 million man-hours into Vista, and, last I heard, they would be approaching 50 million by release. For something like 8,000 employees. Now, this is the biggest software company in the world employing thousands of the best computer scientists outside of universities and Google taking 4 years to make an operating system of a computer that doesn't have to think. Its two main purposes are to run and be safe, and Vista will likely be riddled with bugs and security issues.

This isn't an industry bogged down by unions or overreaching government oversight. The average Microsoft employee works about 60-70 hours a week, so, if you spread a normal person's work week, you're looking at 10,000 - 12,000 employees needed. So how many man-hours to create a humanish robot? And one with no errors, because you can't go around releasing these things into the public if they don't work?

Is Ruby one of them? (Just wondering.)

Quite a lot. Then again, assuming we've already created simple robots that perform simple jobs, you're looking at a huge amount of man-hours that have been freed for robot design. Sure it's not as if everybody who drove a truck for a living would necessarily want to become a robot engineer, but the potential is still there.

Yes, it would take a long time. Quite a lot, actually. Then again, that's progress.

Also, I notice the banner has a lot to advertise to me about robots and engineering.

Although this idea does sound interesting, I'd have to agree with many other people here in saying that this is an idea that would ultimately fail. This sounds an awful lot like Communism to me, only with 21st century things applied to it (such as robots).

First reason why I think it will fail is because this idea assumes everyone will willingly take part of this. Although I've noticed an increase in people sharing things, ideas, etc., we're still not ready for that at this point in time. I don't think most Americans (or anyone from a first/second world country) will want to be seen as equal with equal access to stuff as some nomad from Africa or a bum living in the middle of Eastern Europe or the Middle East.

Secondly, there will always be an "elite" class, and a "poor" class, with some "middle class" thrown in for good measure. Communism was supposed to make everyone equal, with everyone having the same things, and doing things that would ensure everyone got what they needed, and when they needed it, at least on paper. Even the government was supposed to have people equal and what not.

In practice, we saw how the more devious and undermining you could do, the better chances you had of getting in a position of power, and staying there (if Stalin or Mao Zedong is of any example). And because not everyone was willing to do the Communism stuff, the human costs were staggering (but who cares about that right? Greater good and what not apparently). And in the end it still failed because people largely lost incentive to be innovative and continue to make stuff which could be competitive with other products out there.

Again, there will always be people who feel they're above everyone else, and therefore should be given more privileges and rights, and they don't want joe blow the bum to be a part of their group. And there will be a lot of people who feel those "elitists" should probably be put on a ship into the deep ocean, then have that ship get hit by several cruise missiles to blow it out of the water. And I don't even want to get into what someone with a terrorist mindset would love to do if they were given the chance (you can bet Al-qaida would love to have the ability to shut down first world countries at the push of a button if they were given the chance to. What would you do then, when they disable all the electronic stuff, or send a code to program the robots to kill all Americans, or anyone else who doesn't believe the way they do?)

Third, this is assuming that we're at a stage where robotics, electronic engineering and computer programming is on the same level as stuff you'd see in Star Wars or Star Trek. They're still trying to design robots that can mimic human movement, and they're probably doing that stuff because of the incentives of getting a ton of fame, and paid the big bucks if they pull it off. While it might be to help out society, I doubt many people are doing a lot of the things they do because "it's the right thing", and if they're not going to get paid for it, or receive some other incentive, why should they bother doing it?

A lot of people will do as little as they can get away with most of the time (yes, I know, this isn't everyone, but I bet you that your coworkers and fellow students probably don't do everything that they're asked to do either). In a society where you have unlimited free time, while there will be some who will no doubt try to improve society, I'm willing to bet there will be a lot more people doing rowdy things and probably committing crimes since they have so much free time on their hands, and not everyone is going to be an engineer to help further this society (unless you can somehow disable "free will" in human minds and then program them from birth to be nothing but drones for this "perfect system").

I know I'd stop doing anything other than surfing the web or playing games if I didn't have school and two jobs to worry about, screw everyone else, I want to enjoy this free time. I'm sure a lot of people would feel the same way if this happened, not working and getting paid for it. If the people who used to have jobs until robots took over continued to get paid for not working, I don't think they would object at all to this idea being implemented. But of course, they get fired/laid off, and a few people get to make more money, while those workers don't get any of it.

Yes, this stuff sounds great on paper, but factor in human nature and it'll fall apart pretty quickly. And I'm trying to be nice about this too (again, you can bet a madman who manages to break into the computer system would go nuts doing whatever the heck he wants, even if it means the death of thousands or millions of people). I could invent some pretty sick and twisted "what if's" for this post, but I'm going to try to stay PG-13 (other versions that stuck in my head would have massive killings and what not, to the point where all humans should just be killed off and replaced with AI robots who will continually improve themselves on their own. But I don't think humans would willingly let themselves be killed off for this to work).

I hate making quote-response posts that go on forever, so I'm just going to cherry-pick what's interesting.

I meant both issues. That
a) If a single country or small block of countries achieved this, other people would be desperate to get into that country (Mexico anyone?), and they wouldn't all be desperate to start designing the new urinal cake changers
b) Would it not be infuriating and disgraceful to the rest of the world, for people to die for lack of drinking water while we are soaking 1000s of manhours into eliminating the "watches other robots work McDonald's" jobs?

I have to agree with Mikey: it is impossible enough to create some kind of intelligent, adaptable robot that can work with almost no supervision for days at a time. Even designing a burger-flipping robot would take an insane amount of testing. If you want to start making robots that will be dispensing medical advice, or acting as law enforcement, it's even worse.

It is fine to try to make safe machines, but the more autonomy you try to push onto them the more situations they have to be able to reliably and robustly understand and navigate. It sounds impossible to make these robots operate without constant human supervision, and making them able to take voice commands from anyone just in case they start acting outside scenarios they were programmed for - which really opens the door to pranks.

But to say "the law of robotics comes in" on making complex value judgements on the results of human decisions on the environment, something humans have no way to calculate much less repeatably judge, is pretty out there. These machines can only be prepared to protect us in situations they understand properly.

I think having robots make laws is fine, if people can put normal political tools to work (voting, lobbying, etc.) and just have the robots be automating the legal legwork and making non-controversial decisions after offering them to complaints and challenges from the public at large. An internet democracy...could be very responsive if it were secure.

Getting things into and out of space is pretty damned difficult, to put it lightly. Unless we all suddenly agreed space elevators are viable?

Valid points, but...don't you think you'd get a little bored surfing the web and playing games for your entire life? Won't you start craving a job just to feel a little useful and a little socialized?

Only, it's not at all like Communism. Communism requires that a central authority artificially set the income for all citizens regardless of the wealth they produce. That's quite simply not happening here.

The system doesn't advocate global equality, only that all participants in the economy have a minimum income. This isn't Communism.

However, if the "poor" class is on par with what we presently identify as the middle class, then economic class identifiers lose their relevancy. "Elites," then would be based more on merit than any kind of vast wealth.

The failures of Communism simply do not apply in this situation. Nobody is being forced to share the wealth that they have produced, only the wealth produced by machines is being distributed. This system does not require that one cede all aspects of personal sovereignty to the government, nor does it require that one must cede his wealth to the government, which were the exact issues that made people resist Communism.

Again, and I can't emphasize this enough, Communism and Socialism force a maximum ceiling of reward. There is no loss of profit motive, here.

Yes, the system does require an advanced level of robotics in order to replace the need for all menial labor. That is the presumtion of the system.

Secondly, people aren't doing what they want to do because it's "the right thing," they're performing tasks because it's the task that they want to perform. There's nothing "right" about making High-Definition tvs, the only real factor is the want to have one.

People don't commit crime, however, becuase they have time on their hands, they commit crime because of deviant influences or in order to gain access to opportunities that aren't available to their economic status. Or, as well, to subsidize their habits, which is a topic for another time.

You're essentially making blanket statements about society that have no real bearing on how people function. Every crime has a motive, and "Idle Hands" are not the source.

And you don't think you'd ever get bored just surfing the internet and playing games all day? I know I would, and I lack any respectable work ethic whatsoever. Eventually you'll become possessed with the desire to do something constructive that you've always wanted to do, but never had the time or resources to commit yourself to it. Why do you think lottery winners still hold their old jobs?

Which are themselves wild-eyed paranoid fantasies. There are risks involved in any system, and it's a natural process of error-proofing them. Of course, this would require a perhaps never-ending process.

As for sadists, the gun somehow hasn't caused the downfall of free societies from militias. Nor has NORAD been hacked into and the world held hostage with the threat of nuclear annhilation (hell, we haven't even been threatened by a crackpot with maybe one nuke).

An automated industry is only as vulnerable as the homogenous nature of its automotons, and I can guarantee you that there would be a wide range of robots, AIs, and machine hierarchies. It wouldn't be nearly as simple as you all fear it would be.

Lastly, pranking an automated industry is highly impractical, since the effects of factory closure can be seen in the economy at large. If a factory goes down, everyone feels it, because it becomes reflected in the minimum income. This may not mean much to someone who makes more than that minimum, but it would to the vast majority of concerned society, making the prosecution of such pranks an extreme deterrent.


All I really have to say to that is... so what? It's not as if we can't close our borders to illegal immigration, nor export the surpluses of an automated society. Presumably the freed manhours would cause more dedication to charity and positive action for the world at large. Bored Americans could spend time in Sub-Saharan Africa digging trenches instead of trying to design better robots.

It's all an issue of culture, and really, who cares what the rest of the world thinks?

It's far from impossible, but only improbable that the solutions are generated withing our lifetimes, which I think is your primary source of concern. I mean, we've created conditions of quantum teleportation on a small scale, and you think it's impossible to create autonomous machines?

Then the solution is to come up with cheaper methods of launching objects into space. Retrieving objects from space is only difficult on a mathematical level. I mean, objects fall into the earth constantly and it doesn't cost us a dime. Retrieval then, is mostly a matter of propulsion, which isn't going to be that hard to figure out.

I don't really have the time to go through quote-wars and read all of the other posts that have happened since then, so I'll just reply to the most important part.

I feel that this kind of society would encourage wastefulness and excess luxury which is a problem with America right now. I'm not one of those people that thinks you need to get rid of everything you own in order to be happy; I think that people need to learn to be happy with what they have. I don't think increasing consumption is ever going to increase general happiness of people (as I think you said earlier in the thread, richer people aren't necessarily happier), so we need to try and focus more on what makes people happy than how to give them more stuff.

Also, your plans to grossly increase production kinda appal me from an engineering standpoint since I'm all about sustainability and not increasing the need for using raw materials (mining asteroids doesn't work for me as a long-term solution since it's non-sustainable, eventually we'll run out of asteroids or we won't be able to find certain elements/compounds we need out there).

Also, no, no, bad non-sciency person reading fantasies in sci-fi novels and "scientific" correspondents in non-peer-reviewed magazines. When they say it's "not hard" it means it'll only take someone really fucking smart instead of just holy shit unbelievably smart in order to come up with one part of the solution. Interspace travel is somewhere between grand unification theory and solving world hunger.

People know what makes themselves happy, and the whole point of a RICH economy, or Laborless Society, is that it enables people to focus on what they want to do.

While one may presume that it encourages extravagant living, it's like we've all established before, the world only has a finite amount of resources. People would be able to buy frilly outfits and 15 cars (presuming they had the money for it) if they were willing to carry the stigma of being wasteful, thus risking isolation.

Once you've increased average consumtion to the point of "comfort," people will lose the overall desire to consume, and consumtion would drop to what people perceive they need in accordance to their interests. Also, if you don't have to pay machines beyond what is necessary to maintain them, then the long-term livability of a consumer item becomes a non-issue. Consumer items are already designed to go out at almost a pre-determined time as a failsafe to ensure consumtion. Manufacturers have made this a practice since the Depression, when people stopped buying cars and refridgerators because they didn't need another one. When people stopped buying cars, factories shut down, and led to massive unemployment.

What tragedy is there in an unemployed robot? Or, is it even possible for a robot to be unemployed? As consumtion drops, couldn't that machine labor and resources be dedicated to pursuits that would be more beneficial beyond individual consumtion?

But, see, you're assuming that more wealth will create more happiness. What I'm asking is if we can look at society and see that people with more money are actually more happy. Are all of these upper middle class drugged-out emo kids that cut their wrists for their livejournal e-buddies actually happy and having a good life?

I feel all these resources you want to put into making machines to take over for society's work would be better put into figuring out ways to getting people to actually enjoy their lives (I don't think giving everyone X dollars will get people to escape from the mentality where they have to keep up with the Joneses since it's not like those people don't have enough money to live happily as it is now).

I think it's human nature to always want more and we would be better suited to control that urge than to just give them more.

They're not, though if that were the case, then why not make everybody poor so that we have to interact with each other?

Avoiding depression and suicide is a matter of changing the social culture. If suicide reaches epidemic levels, then people will probably be encouraged to "get out" more. Besides, I'd argue that depression is a much more beneficial element of society than we presume, as it causes unique characteristics in the people that suffer from it. Look at any extraordinary individual and chances are that they've suffered through severe bouts of depression.

I'm telling you, though, people already know how to enjoy their lives. How can you set general goals of achieving overarching happiness in a society of individuals? It seems like you're making more generalizations about people than I am. What makes people "happy" to begin with? Most studies on depression and suicide tend to pin it on human nature as social animals, and I don't think that a bunch of machines working around the clock on fuck all knows what is going to improve that. Ephemeralization doesn't mean anything if it doesn't enable all people to live leisurely. You think there's going to be much point in Fusion power if we still have both parents working jobs just to maintain a desired level of consumtion in low-child households?

Which is the beauty of the system. It doesn't force uniformity.

Everything I've said in this thread is based on reasonable assesments of human nature. If economic factors affect everyone through the dividends as opposed to certain sectors, then people will be encouraged through self-interest not to rock the boat. A minimum "comfortable" standard of living will reduce the want for needless consumtion, if not immediately, because there's no point in it, and that fact will dawn on people as they realize that trying to "outdo" the Joneses isn't getting them anywhere.

Woah, woah, woooooaaahh.
Where did you get that? Do you mean that, since everyone is guaranteed to be well fed and have a roof over their heads, they will suddenly no longer desire to splurge? Do you mean that people who go out shopping for stuff they don't need will no longer do so because now there are no starving, homeless people to gloat about their exploits to?

This may just be my pessimism about human nature, but I don't at all think its a reasonable assessment of human nature to say that because everyone has a steady paycheck, they will just completely forget about their very natural competitiveness. Even if the results of their competitiveness turn out with them as coming out on top (or the possibility of coming out on top) reside only in their head, that is enough to encourage them to continue being competitive.
You're right, it just assumes it as a given.

If you consider that the need for economic competitiveness, then yes. People work towards an income because the alternative is starvation. If starvation is no longer a factor, then the need to acquire wealth is removed, and one is only left with the want. Wealth no longer becomes an indicator of success, and it loses its social status, because that's ultimately what people are competing for beyond basic need, status. Comfort doesn't really mean jack when there's no alternative.

If wealth loses its importance, then it becomes replaced by merit as a means of gaining status. As many people as I've worked with, there's always a consistant need to maintain their current level of consumtion. Almost all of the guys I've worked with would have rather spent their time doing what they liked instead of working at a minimal-gain job for some asshole. The company policy was that salary earners had to stay at work and complete their hours regardless of whether or not there was any work. Meaning, that it wasn't a rare occurrence that they'd be sitting in the parking lot, drinking beer, when they'd rather be at home with their families or out doing whatever.

People justify the means (work) with the ends (consumtion), because they despise the means. They reason hating what they do with shiny thingamabobs that are rarely used because they spend the majority of their waking time working. In other words, if people had the time to enjoy what they had, the want to have more decreases.

People work to support their families, and themselves, and the greater amount of wealth one collects, the safer position they are in. Now remove the need for that safety, and remove the need to provide for oneself and one's loved ones. "Splurging" stops, waste stops, because that spending cash is being invested in personal interests as opposed to excess consumtion.

This is not an instantaneous process, but one that requires a long trend of introversion and social interaction. Once people find the time to think, then the reality of the situation will dawn on them.

Does the current system not presume uniformity? Do we not now rely on social trends to determine what is and isn't deviant behavior? Simply because a behavior is not legislated against, doesn't mean that it isn't frowned upon, and the same holds true for a laborless society. The difference is, that in a laborless society people would actually have the time to reason for themselves what is truly deviant behavior, and I believe they'll come to the reasonable conclusion.

Maybe I put too much faith in people's ability to think for themselves, I dunno.

"Things" won't make people happy, but I gotta agree with B, giving people the option of opting out of the Office Space culture isn't a bad thing.