Everyone else will live in 100 square foot apartments in Soviet-style concrete bunkers, eating ramen (or possibly Soylent). But they won't need to work! They'll spend their entire day painting and composing music!
A lot of people here push this vision, and of course they always imagine themselves to be part of the elite. It really is insufferable.
Anyway, the world you are so worried about is already here. A small number of people do continue to do important work that can't be automated. Most other work is unecessary busy work. Artists and musicians already live off of government largesse, either by taking "McJobs" that are artificially highly paid because of government minimum wage, or by actually being on welfare.
Since people can't wrap their heads around the concept of Basic Income, we end up with hordes of people paid to do stupid shit that doesn't matter. The endgame is that we're all government employees in a Dilbertesque hell. Moving papers from one pile to another and back again. Digging holes and then filling them again, since letting people decide what to do during the workday would be too disruptive.
I once heard about the British Colonial Office. The time when it had the most employees was precisely the time when it was dissolved because Britain did not have colonies anymore. They were all just shuffling papers around all day.
I sadly don't have a source for that. Does anyone have a link, by any chance?
C. Northcote Parkinson, 1955. http://www.economist.com/node/14116121
"A glance at the figures shows that the staff totals represent automatic stages in an inevitable increase. And this increase, while related to that observed in other departments, has nothing to do with the size - or even the existence - of the Empire."
What I don't know is where Parkinson got his own figures from. Some of them are cited in the article, but I think not this one.
elites (political in communism vs actually still working people in BI scenario) have amazing life with various luxuries. rest will be allowed to exist and not die of starvation and have a lousy place for sleep. truly bright future...
At least with BI, you don't have to toil away at a time-wasting job that's just busy-work: you can do something you enjoy, and maybe we'll all get lucky and you'll write the next Harry Potter series and become a multimillionaire, while paying a bunch of taxes to keep the system going. If not, at least you have the dignity of not digging holes and then filling them back in all day long to justify your paycheck.
If you don't like this, then let's hear your alternative. The only alternative to this that I can think of is to ban automation, or strictly regulate it so that any automation which does a job that humans can do is banned (allowing only automation which does things that humans cannot do). Do you really want to go that route?
For $400 you get a device that will let you watch movies, play games, check email, get phone calls, etc.
Granted you could also get a cheaper phone but this replaces your TV and computer! Smartphones are really high-value!
I think if you're looking to invest in one useful thing, a good phone would be a great purchase. Maybe the Moto G at $200?
Amortized over a year, you're talking about a lot of bang for the buck.
The S3 generation of hardware has stood up very well.
My only reason to upgrade would be for some good security hardware that can support full disk encryption with no slowdown.
How do you expect that person with meager income to pay for the network bandwidth and usage bill?
>>Smartphones are really high-value!
This I agree wholeheartedly. At least for people like me, who enjoy reading books, smart-phones (with sites like project Gutenberg) provide such an utopia that I feel like living in heaven. Of course, I know that smart-phones don't solve all problems automatically, but from knowledge-seeker's PoV, smart-phones are of great value.
Also, I understand that not all people like to read, but that's a different thing to ponder upon.