The more that we can do this, the more surplus wealth we create. This is clearly working by reference to history: this is the best time ever to be poor, compared to all points in history before it.

This isn't quite so obviously true, but it's likely also the case that an unemployed person today has significantly better life outcomes than a menial worker 100 years ago (which means mines or factories). That's what improved automation buys us.

The problem is that roughly half the population is fighting against this kind of social welfare system and they would only be encouraged by PG's blog post.

Or, importantly, to do menial work on things that were previously considered not as important or productive as what they were doing menial work on.

People always assume retraining means you have to learn a technological job or something else absurdly out of reach. A lot of the time it just means doing the same or similar thing you were doing, but in another context that has now become relatively valuable enough to devote labor to now that this other thing don't require it.

And, as you hint, being able to create a lot of value without a lot of ongoing cost is a pretty key step towards basic income (of which the "leisure economy" is really just a more extreme example). Having that would indeed offset the issues of those who can't or won't transfer skills.

I'd like animals to be raised by people, not machines, I think.

I've never worked on a farm, but I have to believe that 99% of the work is something that most farm workers would probably be more than happy to see automated, such that they could manage the machines, rather than the actual mechanical effort. Move up the food chain, if you will.

Also, from the videos I've seen from PETA, it's pretty clear that humans can act pretty horribly around farm animals, so it's not clear to me that the animals are coming off any better either.

Long term, though - I say automate the creation of food such that animals are not involved. All of the things we love, meat, eggs, etc.. should be technologically generated so that no animal is harmed in it's creation.

Get over the uncanny valley, and even things that would appear to be sacrosanct, such as a waiter/waitress at a restaurant, admitting nurse/doctor in an ER Ward, or teacher in a kindergarden - all of these seem to be things that automation would be a net-win.

If this is an age of rapidly improving efficiency then most things should be getting cheaper. The amount of free time and disposable income we have should be increasing. We should be getting wealthier. Instead the opposite is happening for almost everyone save a tiny class of professionals and capitalists. One could be forgiven for thinking we're living in an age of inefficiency and technological decline, since that's what the price signals are indicating.

I'm not sure this is SV or PG's "fault," but PG's rant is smug and non-productive and amounts to a whole lot of "why do they not eat cake?" It makes him sound clueless and out of touch.

What throws things off, is that new, more desirable, and more expensive items have appeared, that make things look more expensive. That's one of the concerns regarding inequality; is it okay for some members of society to have nicer things than the lower percentile income earners, as long as that group of lower percentile incomer earners have nicer things than they did 50 years ago? Or should we desire that everyone have (roughly) the same quality of thing, even if it now means that the lower percentile would be worse off objectively if inequality wasn't reduced?

PG just assumes that the goal is to reduce poverty (as in, amount of food, health care, education) for the lower percentile - but I expect there is a not insignificant group of people who are more interested in reducing inequality, even if that means an (objective) increase in poverty.

There is, of course, a third path that he doesn't even mention - and that's reducing inequality by bringing up the lower percentile. As an American, I sometimes wonder if it doesn't even occur to him (he certainly didn't discuss it in any detail in his essay) that you can develop universal health care, education, etc... that provides the same level of service regardless of wealth - which means if the top percentile want (for example) better health care, they end up increasing the level of service for everyone, including themselves.

The essay on inequality seemed to have blinders on with regards to that possibility, though I think he gave it passing mention in a sentence regarding bring the bottom up, but didn't discuss it in any great detail.

Some is very cheap http://www.trulia.com/for_sale/Detroit,MI/10000p_price/price...

And some is very expensive http://homesoftherich.net/2013/05/30000-square-foot-tudor-ma...

If price is the factor, deals can be found.

I don't want cows to be domesticated en masse at all. I want there to be a factory full of sterile stainless steel tubes in the shape of a t-bone where steak cells endlessly reproduce in a bath of ideal nutrient soup...

I mean, I wonder if those who hold such views actually realize human beings aren't actually robots or aren't actually the "extras" in the Sci-Fi stories ...

I grew up in a town where the dairy farms employed lots of people, as did the businesses that supported them. Most of those farms are gone or scaled back as dairy became an industrialized operation.

The guys who would be working as farm hands year round are now left with seasonal construction jobs and long winters of unemployment in nasty trailer parks. They lose their professional options and their dignity.

I think that we're wired to have a purpose, and not everyone identifies creative pursuits as fulfilling.

Humans would not have to work, but its a huge mistake to assume the elite will willingly share that prosperity.

Getting upset at the loss of jobs is the luddite position. The more socially liberal position is getting upset that the savings from the loss of said jobs are rolled up into the pockets of corporate executives and working to ensure that wealth is equitably distributed. The socially conservative position is that the additional wealth freed up by the automation will create new job opportunities elsewhere that the recently unemployed individual can seek out and pursue. I lean more to the socially liberal side (and hopefully this bias did not creep out in my description of the conservative point of view), but either one is preferable to putting the kibosh on progress because it might step on someone's toes.

If technology killed jobs we'd have like 100 million people working instead of 6 billion workers.

The question is, can our society survive the awkward transition period to post-scarcity, or will we crumble in civil wars and uprisings before we reach the goal of 100% unemployment?