The Laborless Society
 

Why work?

In his book, The RICH Economy, by Robert Anton Wilson, Wilson argues that unemployment is part of the natural growing pains involved in economic evolution. Unemployment, according to Wilson, is not a disease but the natural result of automisation, and that Labor Unions, the government, and corporations have slowed the rate of automisation out of the fear of unemployment.

The following solutions for the unemployed society are presented:

The end result in the laborless society is where human creative potential is achieved through education and social interaction. People would be able to do what they want to do instead of forcing themselves to work in order to do what they want because machines have already enabled them.

Machines, after all, only require as much wealth is necessary to maintain them, getting more from doing less.

How do you feel about the prospect of the Laborless Society?

In what types of job is human emotion entirely necessary?

And that's essentially the problem. Who owns the flow of capital? How do you extract wealth to insure that all citizens are capable of maintaining a minimum standard of living without disadvantaging others? That's an issue of extraction, though, not of a dualistic wealth vs. poor dichotomy.

Besides, the very nature of a Laborless Society is that material wealth is meaningless, and that the things of greatest value are derived from creative input and scientific advancement.

People assume that a life of leisure creates happiness, but that leisure is meaningless without meaningful social interaction. In a society where everyone maintains a state of leisure, the wealthy will integrate themselves in order to achieve happiness.

When Emile Durkheim found that the wealthy had a much higher suicide rate than the poor, it became painstakingly clear that wealth alone does not generate happiness. If there is no need to acquire wealth in order to be happy, then you're looking at the perfect society.

Entertainment and the arts. Which in a Laborless society wouldn't be merely Jobs anymore. Comedians work so that they can keep doing standup. If nobody had to work, then creative potential becomes maximized.

None of those require human emotions. Everything you've just listed up there is based on imperical reasoning and scientific method. Sociology, Medicine, Ethnography, and Psychiatry are harmed when people apply emotions to reasoning.

Humans are only required to interpret data, not to acquire it. Even then you could theoretically create a machine that can interpret data, and then the only thing humans will be capable of is creativity.

Right, however interpretation does not require emotional input on the part of the interpreter. If somebody walks to the other side of the street in order to avoid a bum, it doesn't take much emotional input from myself to interpret that this person is afraid of homeless people.

Emotional input is what leads to stuff like ethno-centric reasoning.

Double Post:
Not if you've come up with a system where you can extract that wealth consentually so that it can be re-distributed according to the above plans. A Consumtion tax is the perfect way to do this.

Part of the problem is machine maintenence. Or new machines. Someone will want to make the new, better machines. And, you'd be hard pressed to find people who want to make said machines if they see everyone else just sitting on their asses all day. So you'd have to give that person more money to do it. Which means there needs to be a premium on the machine, which means the people who want to use them will have to pay for them, which they can't, because we all make the same thing anyway, so they will have to get jobs to pay for them making new machines (or "becoming" machines, doing machine labor), which means we're right back where we started.

And nothing new would ever come about. A machine can't create something it isn't programmed to. And if someone who can reason, create, dream isn't programming a computer, then everything will stay exactly the same.

I mean, that 4th step in the RICH example, we can't enjoy space and time without being there first, and being there takes work from humans.

Emotion certainly does not harm medicine. Certainly, maybe we'd be better off if we had machines that eliminated human error and more doctors would be better off prescribing, say, hospice for terminal patients, but quality of care is based on emotion. Most of the people, I know, wouldn't want to walk into a hospital where not only are the tools made of stainless steel, but the "things" taking care of them as well. I doubt that is something a majority of people are willing to sacrifice.

And we're not so stupid to think that a machine pretending to care about something actually does.

Which can be solved by maintenance machines. If machines can be programmed to maintain other machines, then you have a self-sustaining labor force.

However, if people want to make a new machine then they'd have the resources at their disposal to do so. You can collectivise capital and receive investments in order to develop a new machine. A minimal standard of living has nothing to do with it, because people won't be making the same thing. People who produce items of high value would be receiving a greater reward than those who do "nothing." You're confusing socialism with collective ownership of GNP.

Besideswhich, people can not merely do nothing and sit on their asses all day. Eventually they'll get bored, which is where education comes in. People would want to become scientists or artists, or comedians because that's what they want to do, and they can spend as much time as they like dedicating themselves to their professions due to the laborless society.

Take the current state of Authoritative Education. Colleges insist that we take classes we don't want to in order to become "well-rounded individuals." Why should we become well-rounded individuals? Because it makes us more competitive in a labor market. Therefore, if we remove labor altogether, then people would only have to educate themselves according to what they excel at.

The current system encourages us to strengthen our weaknesses, but if we start focusing on what we do poorly, then we only become mediocre. You have no unique or extraordinary people because everybody has the same capabilities.

Right, so actually physically getting somewhere completely refutes the notion of abolishing the need to work to enable oneself to get somewhere. The entire point of a laborless society is that machines have enabled us.

Any reason why you couldn't program a machine to be creative for us?

So you mean you've never learned anything useful to your own interests in a course you didn't initially want to take? (Not to mention I'm pretty sure that my next employer isn't going to hire me for the class in the history of urban America I took two years ago.)

Somehow I don't think that College Algebra or Calculus is going to further myself as a writer.

Not really. The only problem is how do you create a creative machine?

To an extent, some forms of creativity could probably be simulated using various techniques that tend to fall under the umbrella of artificial intelligence, however far from actually being intelligent those algorithms are. But it's true that a machine will probably never be able to compare with a human for most tasks that require creativity, until, and if, we ever develop strong AI.

Of course, by then you have more pressing questions, like "Are humans obsolete?" and "How to prevent the coming robot apocalypse?".

The problem with it, though, is you've removed incentive. With people's buying power grouped so closely together, a high amount of work/extra income will be required for a small amount of reward.

What makes you so sure? People sit on their asses all day now. A multitude of people who take advantage of the welfare system prove this. And these people don't sit there complaining about how they wish they could go to college more.

The only thing I can think of to argue against that is that people who have parents who don't have to work so hard will get a better upbringing. However, that requires too much faith in society.

Additionally, you have to look at crime statistics. Crime generally goes up in the summer, and that is generally attributed to students who don't have high school to go to in the summer. That could be as much of an outlet for someone than education or working for more than you're already getting for absolutely nothing.


Another issue is government. I assume we are giving machines the task of running governments? So what about idealistic differences. A robot handles when Iran pops up with nukes? And...we vote for what programming is implemented? Or the robot just decides?



Mechanical and algorithmic tasks can be handled by machines. The rest cannot be. Despite anything we could say about politicians, I doubt a machine could ever pass the Turing test in that field.

The reward involved in creating new products of a laborless society comes predominantly from a love of the subject. Take the internet, for instance. There's a massive amount of projects of love that are more often than not superior to commercially-produced products, released for free with the only reward derived from the thanks of the community, and the use of the product by its creator. Sun Microsystems, for instance, released the Open Office suite, and what reward have they derived from it?

In a capitalist society, people make High-Definition tvs because they want more money, but in the Laborless society, people would make High-Definition tvs because they want better televisions.

People that abuse the welfare system are the exceptions, not the rule. There are millions of people who receive government benefits just to go to College, and many welfare recipients work hard to better themselves. Not to mention the people that don't receive welfare benefits like you or I. Is it reasonable to apply the results of a poor, ignorant minority living in squalor to the rest of society?

Besides, going to college still costs money, and not everybody is willing to take student loans.

So, where exactly does it say that higher crime rates during the summer are attributed to minor delinquints? What kind of crime are we talking about? Who commits the crime? Where do they live? You're not considering enough factors involved in the rise of crime rates to make any definite statement on the effects of idleness. Crime isn't as much an outlet as creativity or work, because crime carries social stigmas.

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That's something developed as the process goes along. A government run by machines could never be possible so long as all nations on the world are trapped in a constant state of competition. Certainly, though, the beurocratic functions of government could be processed expertly by machines.

No reason that it couldn't teach you a different set of thinking skills. Or maybe get you to understand a little bit more about other people that specialize in other things so you can socialize with them.

I'd imagine you'd do it the same way you'd 'theoretically' make one to interpret data.

Maybe calculus might be an interesting conversation piece, but College Algebra? =P

Besideswhich, my main issue with the state of higher learning is that they force you to pay for classes you don't want to take.

Even if a machine can interpret data, though, that doesn't mean that it's capable of coming up with a solution. Ultimately though, the creative machine problem comes down to issues of emotion. How do you make a machine feel emotion? If it does feel emotions, will it be capable of creating in the arts? Can a machine make the BESTEST VIEDO GAM EVAR!??!?!!11

Although I've enjoyed everyone's comments in the thread, at it's heart the plan we're discussing makes no sense from a technological or economic standpoint. Why don't we just call it "the philosophy of a sci-fi utopia?"

Technological

First of all, this seems to require an astonishing and possibly impossible level of creativity from machines. Machines do not think like people at all. They can only react to things they have been programmed to prepare for. Even if you try to design things to "learn," they need to be preprogrammed to observe and learn from it. And all current "learning" methods (neural nets, etc.) require very careful coding and training.

Sure you build welding machines and then repair machines, but when a freak tornado comes by and throws the welder down a hole, will the repair machine know to look for it? And if it does, will it be able to get down the hole? Will it be planning a way to get out of the hole? How can you design something that can react to scenarios it's creators would have never thought of beforehand? And do so safely and reliably and in a way that will not accidentally hurt property or humans? It is a massive amount of work (and of code, and of built-in wealth) to do this. It sounds like you have to do this for almost every machine, though - if you don't, then you're stuck having humans watch and guide and repair machines, which sounds like "boring" work to me.

And never mind trying to make a psychologist robot (that's rich!); you can't even make a good experimenter robot. Design of experiment is a very complicated, creative process. You have to know enough about the situation and the world at large to design controlled, repeatable tests that hold as many variables as possible constant. You have to use judgement to decide how many factors to test and to what level of detail. You have to make a "soft" call between different equations of fit for your data.

Economic

Stage 1 makes no sense. In addition to being almost impossible (see above), you set special rewards for people who remove their own jobs. Like the fry cook at the Burger King is going to be able to handle that. Like the logger has access to that kind of hardware in his spare time. Also: who says you can only build a machine that does your job? What if you find a way to change how society works so your job isn't necessary? Biological or procedural changes ftw.

This whole idea of the other stages is self-contradictory: we're supposed to be enlightened enough to not care about money enough to give everyone plenty to survive on. And yet, use money as a way to encourage people to be creative or "invent" themselves into obsolescence?

Why does education wait until stage 4? Stage 1 requires massive education. In stage 2 and 3 people are supposed to be out of jobs in droves. Somehow these jobless wraiths will not be bored, humiliated, and depressed, like what happens in real life today. Because they're not welfare recipients - they're shareholders!

The plan assumes that rich societies should channel their wealth into automating work and raising the standards of living of their own unemployed people. But countries do not exist in a vacuum. Wouldn't other people emigrate into the free hand-outs country? Should people with such awesome wealth be putting everyone on middle class while others live on $1/day?

If no one is working the menial, dull jobs, where is the impetus to improve them? If there are robots out there mining diamonds in the arctic, and no human being is really working in this field, or looking at it, how are we going to realize there's a better way to do the job? Actually - do we even care anymore? If the job's being automated and we have insanely self-sufficient automatons do we care it takes 10 robots to do the job of 3? And ok, maybe you say "make a robot that designs new diamond robots." How will we make sure that this robot designs things in a way that's acceptable to the community at large? Maybe the designer robot comes up with a method that completely devastates the environment, or breaks our morals in some other way, but there's no human ethics informing it's actions.

Lastly, economics is the science of allocating scare resources. Unfortunately, this author lives in a fantasy world where almost everything is done for us and all of our needs are met. Is that even economics anymore? It seems to me we should be debating the philosophy of happiness in paradise - which this thread assumes exists, and will be maintained for the entirety our somehow-extended lives.

I never said that robots could make good psychologists, only that human emotions aren't necessary for those fields.

As for technology, this isn't expected to be feasible in any sense for several decades, if not centuries, but presumably one would program robots based on Asimov's laws, and a robot that performs welding functions would have a built-in welding tool.

If you find a way that makes your job unnecessary, then you've essentially fulfilled a step of transition into a laborless society. As for whether or not burger flippers can have access to hardware is besides the point. The point is that some of them will have the ingenuity to design a machine that will replace their function. I mean, working in a fast food resturaunt is practically mechanical in and of itself. If workers replace themselves with machines then all you'd need is a foreman who can watch the machines and correct any irregularities, up to the point where the machines can correct irregularities themselves.

The idea behind creative incentive is simply human curiosity and the need for creative output itself. Using money as an incentive to get people into the laborless society is a draw. Eventually as the need for money declines, so will money itself, until you have an entire economy managed by robots, and its output accessible to the humans that want them. Resources would be allocated to the most appropriate products based on their demand, and humans would create new products to improve the standard of living.

Stage 4 is the immediate result of stages 2 and 3. If people become idle the demand for education will increase. It's the natural development during the transition.

I don't follow. Presumably as one society becomes automated, others would follow their example, and the process of immigration and naturalisation would be dependant on factors set by society. A robotics engineer, for instance, would be given more priority for immigration than some guy who will open a Qwik-E-Mart.

Or do you mean that it's somehow immoral for some countries to be fully automated while others aren't? Immorality doesn't factor into any of this. Whether or not the members of a nation want to export the surplus of the automated industry is up to them.

Yes. Waste reduction is the natural progression of any field. After all, if you can build 3 robots that do the job previously fulfilled by 10, then the cost of production goes down, the GNP goes up, and as a result, so does the Negative Minimum Wage, or Dividends, or what have you. Those who design the robots then make more money as their designs are purchased, which grants them access to more resources to design even better robots, or live more extravagantly.

Again, this is where the Law of Robotics comes in. The first law of Robotics states that no robot can harm a human or allow a human to come into harm. This law supercedes all other laws. Therefore, even if the robot does come up with a way to extract diamonds more efficiently, if that extraction creates a negative impact on the environment, which then leads to human suffering, then the robot will not consider it an acceptible choice.

Aha! And thus you've struck on the greatest incentive for creative and scientific development of them all: the acquisition of greater resources. An automated industry cannot maintain itself indefinitely with the resources available to us, which means that developing the resources of outer space becomes a necessity.

Besides, money hasn't as of yet been completely eradicated, and the price of goods would still depend on the supply and demand of that good. So, I guess what I'm really getting around to is, what's your point?

This all sounds like the ravings of a techie with a hard-on for Marxism. But this is still intriguing.

A nice theory. Only a fool would claim to know exactly how our economic paradigm works. Like Adam Smith. With GOD's "invisible hand" of the market jerking our economy off for 'his' pleasure.

At the beginning of our industrial civilization this utopian thinking was quite prevailant. It's really too bad that most people nowadays work longer and harder then medieval serfs. Traditionally they only had to give three days labor to their overlord. As opposed to 40 hours a week. 30(?) in France, 35(?) in the rest of Europe for the majority of people.

This is just the same kind of rational argumant that brought us manditory public education. Which as a whole has made the population much stupider if literacy rates are any indication. In the US at least. Compare literacy rates in the 1890's, 1930's, and 1990's.

Utopian nonsense. If it could've happened it would've happened. In an era of climate change/collapse, resource depletion, and a massive worldwide population boom this is hard to contemplate occuring. Or maybe I need to spend some time with Green Anarchists, who attempt to adhere to ideas like these.

We'd all like to quit our jobs/school/etc. This isn't the solution though. Personally, I'd hope for a depression worse then the Great Depression.

The Federal Reserve controls the flow of capital. There's a well accepted theory by numerous economists that the mishandling of capital by the Reserve Bank caused the Great Depression. As for extracting wealth......

Easy. Just do what they did in the Middle Ages; negative bank interest. Works like this; if you have $100,000 in the bank then whatever the current interest rate is have automatically deducted rather then added to the accounts total. During the Middle Ages this happened and the rich spent most of their money on worthwhile investments of priceless value; Cathedrals, and art basically. Enforcement wouldn't be a problem. They didn't have an IRS agency to enforce this either. Most wealth nowadays are numbers on a computer.

Redistibulating the wealth is too... Marxist for me to really seriously consider. But doesn't everybody -even to this day- benefit from those old Medieval Churches?

Couple of assumptions here. People assume that wealth will make you happy. Big assumption. A vast majority of the world does not enjoy the material and technological wealth the West does. Does that mean they're miserable without it? Not necessarily.

Second assumption is that wealthy people seek more wealth to be happier. Power (wealth is power) corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Long after the elite few billionaires have made their billions, there's not much left to buy in the world. I doubt this is what drives them onward from that point. I think they're more driven by their will to dominate even more.

This is pretty much what I am saying.

This leads to another question. What can you dominate in a laborless society? If you push, people will push back, and since their well-being is pretty much guaranteed by automated industry, people won't care how much money one has.

Then wrap it in the veneer of collective ownership and dividends, and it doesn't sound so Marxist anymore. In any case, it's all the distribution of the wealth generated by the automated industry. The big difference between Marx and the Laborless society is precisely Labor. Marxism still presumes that material objects possess the most important value and must be equally distributed. What then when material possessions become immaterial?

The problem with Socialism is that people will only work enough to not get fired (or executed). What then if people don't have to work altogether?

The beginning of the Industrial Revolution also didn't have calculating machines. We're coming closer and closer to the point where an automoton can perform the equal physical functions of a human. It's not as unfeasible as you think.

I like utopias as much as the next guy. I like this idea, certainly, if I knew that everyone in the world behaved somewhat similarly to me or to the others who have spoken here. But, the fact is, they just don't.

99% of what has been created for free is up to a standard of which could run a society. And we're talking about the best computer scientists and engineers already devoting their time, and we are nowhere near the level of sophistication required, if it is even possible.

What's the most successful open source project to date? Wikipedia, which is riddled with bugs and errors (something I would not want in robots running everything)? Mozilla, which has so many security flaws that it has as many version fixes as Microsoft, seemingly?

Let's keep in mind that people try to bring down computer systems around the world for free, for fun, for the challenge. That would happen in this society.

But how? Machines do what they are told. So, who gets to tell the machines what to do? You can't just throw out government and say, "We'll figure that out once the ball gets rolling." And what if changes are neccessary? Will machines create laws for us? To govern us?

Many laws right now are made with religion as a basis for reason, which machines can't have (they may be able to interpret the Bible in the near future). I'd like to be able to get rid of that, but 92% of Americans believe in God, I imagine over 50% want law based on religion...so robots can't make them.

But calculation is a simple task, as are most physical functions. Calculation was limited by our ability to run complex systems; physical functions were limited by our ability to construct rigid materials. Reason, imagination, creativity (not artistic, necessarily, but the ability to create something from nothing or to build upon past ideas)...these aren't things that are solved physically.

We understand so little about the brain now that we can't even put really into words how it works. We understand enough about it to know that it will probably never be implementable in robots.

And this isn't something that can be explained away by auto unions and secret government organizations (as you said an author theorizes). People study this stuff in universities on public grants and they find this out. The progress is slowed by universal limitations, not by design.

So why is it then that no automobile factory has ever been shut down by hackers?

Nobody said that government would be thrown out. In fact, I explicitly stated that a government run by machines would be impossible so long as nations are in competition with each other. As for your assumtion about the government being run by machines, you were wrong to assume that. My "get the ball rolling" thing is a matter of developing the structure of a machine government.

Uh, Robots do what they're told, buddy. Unless, of course, they think that the laws they're told to make would harm people. In either case, understanding human reasoning is irrelevant. Unless the law violates the robot's ethical programming, he'll make it.

So explain to me how much creativity is involved in flipping burgers, or taking orders, or driving a truck, or working a mine? Somebody would have to provide input in order to enhance the process, of course, but this can also be eventually phased out.

Don't presume that we can't replicate brain-like functions in an automoton. Geneticists used to think that the human genome was too complex to understand and now we're trying to map it. What's holding us back is our perception and capabilities, not because it's "too hard."

Can't you keep incentive if you set the minimal income fairly low? Make it just enough that you can afford a healthy diet and a cramped apartment. You don't have to work, but you probably won't be able to eat tasty snacks or get neat gadgets without a lot of saving. If people want a new car or whatever, sure, they can get a job. That way, you keep an economic incentive as well as whatever incentive there is from people being interested in a given field.

What's Marxist about this whole issue is that he's essentially talking about a hierarchy-less society/civilization. The reality of which is what Marxism envisioned when we hit the utopia phase. Instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. Civilization and society have always revolved around hierarchy throughout the ages.

Which brings me to another point; The transition phase would be as easily as corruptable. The world is far from ideal. If it was, Marxism-Communism would've worked and we wouldn't even have to worry about the robots doing our work for us. The power ceded to the government would be far from incorruptable, and would not be returned. In the nightmare scenario of such a transition we could all be living in slums patrolled by Terminator Robots with a oddly familiar Austrian accent.....

Equality on the scale this theory proposes seems impossible. Even if the technology is there. Especially given the ethnic/gender issues that have been so defined in the past worldwide plague us to this day.

*edit*What about robot equality? Why do they have to be slaves?

Resources. Access to resources. Whether that's clean drinking water, food, energy, infastruture etc. It's the competitive (greedy?) spirit of mankind. There is plenty of sociopaths out there.

It's the distribution of theoretical wealth. Meaning it's value is just a matter of prospective. If everyone has equal access to it, is it really of any value?

Say for example, gold was more abundant then concrete. Everybody would live in gold houses, but some people (the elite) would feel compelled to live in concrete houses for one reason or another. Surely some would be content with their gold houses, but I'm guessing most would not be.

Competition whether it be economic, industrial, or military in nature has been the basis of civilization.

Is it in the human spirit to manage such a feat? You have more faith in our species then I do.

No, it didn't. But it did vastly increase the energy expenditure/gain ratio.

We were supposed to work less for more gain. Instead we spent more time producing more commodities for the mass consumption for everybody, while rapidly expanding our population base.

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.

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.