But the core of it is a change of focus away from "everyone must contribute as much as they can" which the lefties also support. It's more the recognition that actually we could (maybe!) get more done if we didn't insist on everyone doing something.
Creation of a thing costs a lot of time and resource.
Copying said thing is trivial to the point of free.
(This is the biggest difference between our current culture, and previous years. Copying is effectively free.)
However, we already have countries that ignore copyright/patent/trademark (China). The new solution is to remove features from devices, and to tie them into some cloudshit.
We get some dog-and-pony show that cloud means we get new features, but in reality, it's just an anti-cloning tactic.
> To make things worse, there actually is a class of people who have no job at all, which creates a kind of fear among the hangers-on.
Is a rephrasing of Marx's idea of the reserve army of labor. They are the lumpen who _could_ be used as replacements but mostly aren't.
I do mostly agree with GP's main point. The skill floor for meaningful work—even before this recent round of AI hullabaloo—has increased to the point where there are many people unemployable at any wage.
I hate to tell you this, but you've very much missed your target of "not something that's already been talked about for 200 years."
Who does the selecting? Who says, "You, there! You shall devote your time to programming robots, so your neighbors can 'be good friends' and have meaningful relationships. Buck up, comrade. Look how good it will be for everyone (...else)!"?