The Laborless Society

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).

How ya doing, buddy?