That is at least if everything (or almost) goes as planned and things like universal income become a reality.
Also, i thought everyone from hackernews thought this.
Thus, working to increase automation is still useful, because it is likely that we will soon either tax the owners of automated capital more, or economically disenfranchised people will have a bloody revolution, and the new owners of the automated capital will be slightly more inclined to voluntarily share for the next 70 years or so.
The end result is that mopping floors and cleaning toilets becomes a robot job, and no human anywhere does it, freeing them up for tasks that actually require human brainpower. I think everyone needs to work, but the BS jobs we have been inventing are not fit for that purpose. Everyone needs to do a thing that is productive by the loosest definition and makes them happy. Like jarring your own pickles. Or making an online comic with stick figures. Or domesticating foxes. When freed of the requirement that people have to do work to perform certain critical functions that keep civilization running, like growing food and paving roads, people can instead put more effort into things that are niche interests.
It might be playing video games for 12 hours a day. That's okay. You don't need that guy to raise chickens for your dinner. But you might need him later, when you decide to spend 4 hours every week to play a video game, and you don't want to waste your time on one that is not fun, or too deep for that level of time commitment. That guy will soon become an subject matter expert on video games, and you can trust him to blow away the chaff, because he loves video games.
Some people still do the niche stuff even after working 40 hours or more in a week. If you think about what they can do in their leisure time, just imagine what they would accomplish if their hobby was their full time job.
> I can't wait to live in a world where we all acknowledge...
If anything, the current trajectory of automation is leading to an intensification of the difference between have's vs have-not's. Many powerful people in the "have's" group WANT this, they want another gilded age where you have fantastically wealthy people and serfs.
UBI isn't a given and making it a reality is going to get ugly even if it succeeds.
> I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology
Sounds a little like Accelerationism[0]
Not to say that it doesn't bear risks but there's currently no indication that this time jobs wouldn't be replaced by something better. Just because many think so doesn't make it true, Keynes also firmly believed in the 1930s that we would run out of work and yet I cannot see that anywhere.
So, I suspect they have been costing jobs. Society has simply shifted to use a lower percentage of peoples time vs. having large numbers of people never work.
However, unless we start reducing the retirement age down to late 40's or other very large scale changes that's only going to keep working for so long.
But still, we don't see joblessness or masses of people unqualified for the market. Faster developments will lead to many having 3-5 careers over their life time but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
It's true we are creating more jobs, but mostly by having people do things that are low priority and thus low paying. There might be unlimited demand for service jobs like raft guides, but they pay crap because they compete with things like video games.
What disappears is the middle. This means we have to ensure that as many people as possible can get an education preparing them for higher value-added jobs. More diverse university courses and free education could help with that, vocational training can do the same.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696161
Maybe you are moving society to an cyberpunk dystopia, but who knows what you come after that? Maybe after some time this 'new society' stabilize and the world(s) will be a better place.
I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology, like others can, that this is for some greater good and 72 virgins after the singularity hits, but logic, that cruel mistress wont allow those too last.