If it's not, then why should we concern ourselves at all with how much money we need to redistribute to people? Oh, wait, that's right, making it look like I want everyone to be poor makes my ideas look horrible.

It's just a shame when that depression happens after they've become extraordinary and stops them from continuing to be extraordinary (as it seems to happen quite often).

I don't really think most people know how to enjoy their lives, they know what they think they need to achieve in order to have a happy life, but then when they get there they realize it's not actually what they wanted.

Also, I don't really know where you get a room full of robots speculating on human happiness, since I don't think I talked about that anywhere along the line.

I also think a life of leisure is a life of waste, so maybe that's part of my problem with this whole plan.

Any reason those people haven't realized that outdoing their neighbors hasn't gotten them anywhere yet with our current system?

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Piffle. True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides,the majority of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked."

I've always liked that quote by Melville.

As an artist I personally begrieve the fact that I must often put my art aside in order to work a thankless and shallow job. I'm happiest when I'm unemployed and I'm most PRODUCTIVE artistically when I'm unemployed because I have the time and the energy to be creative. But I think this probably only applies to visual artists, writers, and musicians.

I think part of the problem with both sides of the debate at this point is that everyone is speaking in absolutes. There will never - in my opinion - be complete, national unemployment because there ARE a few freaks out there that validate their existences via their careers. They want to work and they like to work, and they would probably gladly be part of the population that goes to work in this pseudo utopia. Maybe they just don't work fifty hours a week, is the thing.

Not all rich people are unhappy - not even most of them. I know quite a few affluent people who are very happy with themselves. Inversely, I'm dirt poor and miserable because of it. So are a lot of people.

Something will someday HAVE to be done as automation increases but I think it's a long way off - as in well after we're all dead.

No, I'm just saying that I've already stated your point, and that bringing it up doesn't really mean anything. Wealth doesn't guarantee happiness, no fucking shit. Maybe if people had the time provided by leisure they'd be able to find out what it was, exactly, that makes them happy.

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, "What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?" The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

Such as in what cases? All I can think of right now is Hemingway, and though I'm sure there are plenty more, I'm not certain I get your point. If the depression is the causation for the extraordinary, then these individuals that stopped being extraordinary would have remained mediocre their entire life in the absence of depression.

Only waste, perhaps, in the material. Then again, we have the robots covering for us, so I don't understand the problem.

People don't know what they want because they haven't been granted the time to discover themselves in a world that demands their constant attention just to remain competitive. It took me years to figure out that I wanted to be a journalist. There's no guarantee that I'll be happy with it, but there's no more rewarding experience to me than to write and know that people are being enlightened or better informed because of it.

I didn't mean to imply that we'd have a bank of AIs sitting around trying to figure out what makes Umans tick, but only that your assertion that a bunch of machines could somehow be working towards an unidentified, non-descript general goal that will magically make humanity as a whole (which it won't, because humans don't comprise a whole) happier. What is it that the manufacturing power of machines can be put towards that better humanity? Bigger shit? Bigger guns? More paperweights? I don't follow you. Trying to set machines working towards some goal that you have no concept of while insisting that people remain toiling, unhappy, grudging wage-slaves comes across more sadistic than benevolent.

Because they aren't granted the time to enjoy the fruits of their labour. People spend so much time working that they honestly don't know what they want. They can't think, can't rest, and can't play. Therefore, people consume what is insisted that they consume.