http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-eboo...
Those factories only exists if they have a market for the goods they produce.
Yeah, pretty much. Human wants are unlimited. (To quote Boethius, "If free-handed Plenty should dispense riches from her cornucopia as plentiful as the sands cast up by the storm-wracked sea, or as the stars that shine in heaven - men still would not stop their miserable complaints.")
Have you read Chase's 'Plutonomy' papers from a few years ago? Fearsome reading.
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=2512...
It's not that fearsome.
Over time it becomes easier to give more value to more people thanks to progress in technology and greater amounts of money/economic wealth sloshing around.
The people who do something of value, or capture it, derive a huge surplus from the leverage provided by what's out there right now ( billions of people, trillions of dollars )
You can see the difference between Nikola Tesla - an absolute genius - who created the basis for all modern technology/progress and Google.
Even with all the value he created, he couldn't really derive that much personal benefit, as the utility of his inventions were low before network effects set in and there were fewer people with less disposable income to spend money on his inventions. He also got screwed but that's another story.
Compared to Google ( very smart guys yes, geniuses perhaps ) which started less than 14 years ago and has become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world.
Lady Gaga ( 4 years ) vs. Madonna ( 40 years ) for huge success.
Avatar ( 3 billion ) vs. Jaws ( .5 billion )
You catch my drift. Feedback loops are getting larger and faster - it's like nothing stands still anymore.
But society is getting better.
You can worry about the computers taking over, or worry about humanity collapsing under the weight of resource crises. I know which I'd prefer. Someone's going to have to build all those wind farms, and retrieve scarce resources from landfill, and I'd rather it wasn't me.