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What about when consumers can buy nanotech 3D printers? :-)
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing

And then print their own solar cells, 3D printers, and matter extractors and recyclers? :-)

Mainstream economics, if it ever made any sense, is on its way out...

That said, totally free global markets might not be that bad if there was a global basic income as a human right for every person to regularly claim some part of the fruits of the industrial commons:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html

And of course some way to account for externalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And a way to limit the concentration of wealth and power that can destroy the free market by regulatory capture (as happens all too often in the USA...)

Note that Friedrich Hayek said he was not against government intervention if it was based on "a clear set of principles", and a basic income as a human right (which also might smooth out business cycles), as well as concerns about externalities and concentration of wealth and power, might fit that definition:
"The road to serfdom: text and documents"
http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&pg=PA20
"... he repeatedly emphasized in his talks before business groups that he was not against government intervention per se: "I think what is needed is a clear set of principles which enables us to distinguish between the legitimate fields of government activities and the illegitimate fields of government activity.""

Otherwise, without a human right to make a claim on the fruits of the industrial commons, what are you going to do if robots, AI, better design, and saturated demand take your job? Marshall Brain painted that picture, and it is not pretty:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

And Frances Moore Lappé has already pointed out how starvation is quite possible around plenty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9
"Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a maldistribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living."

Some other ideas about freedom, if you are interested:
"Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

And from Ivan Illich's deschooling society, that echoes some of Hayek's points:
http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
"""
The choice is between two radically opposed institutional types, both of which are exemplified in certain existing institutions, although one type so characterizes the contemporary period. as to almost define it. This dominant type I would propose to call the manipulative institution. The other type also exists, but only precariously. The institutions which

What about when consumers can buy nanotech 3D printers? :-)
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing

And then print their own solar cells, 3D printers, and matter extractors and recyclers? :-)

Mainstream economics, if it ever made any sense, is on its way out...

That said, totally free global markets might not be that bad if there was a global basic income as a human right for every person to regularly claim some part of the fruits of the industrial commons:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html

And of course some way to account for externalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And a way to limit the concentration of wealth and power that can destroy the free market by regulatory capture (as happens all too often in the USA...)

Note that Friedrich Hayek said he was not against government intervention if it was based on "a clear set of principles", and a basic income as a human right (which also might smooth out business cycles), as well as concerns about externalities and concentration of wealth and power, might fit that definition:
"The road to serfdom: text and documents"
http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&pg=PA20
"... he repeatedly emphasized in his talks before business groups that he was not against government intervention per se: "I think what is needed is a clear set of principles which enables us to distinguish between the legitimate fields of government activities and the illegitimate fields of government activity.""

Otherwise, without a human right to make a claim on the fruits of the industrial commons, what are you going to do if robots, AI, better design, and saturated demand take your job? Marshall Brain painted that picture, and it is not pretty:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

And Frances Moore Lappé has already pointed out how starvation is quite possible around plenty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9
"Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a maldistribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living."

Some other ideas about freedom, if you are interested:
"Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

And from Ivan Illich's deschooling society, that echoes some of Hayek's points:
http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
"""
The choice is between two radically opposed institutional types, both of which are exemplified in certain existing institutions, although one type so characterizes the contemporary period. as to almost define it. This dominant type I would propose to call the manipulative institution. The other type also exists, but only precariously. The institutions which

Robots, AI, better design, and limited demand are probably going to take your job eventually; see Marshall Brain's "Manna" story for what it might look like:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

You can worship the "free market" abstraction all you want, and by extension the big companies that dominate it,
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
but enlightened self-interest (let alone morality) suggests you should be more on the side of the humans than an abstract concept about exchange, one that ignores externalities as well as the negative side of the concentration of wealth by using huge immortal amoral corporations that would treat any human like a piece of discardable machinery if it is profitable.

With a 21st century technosphere capable of producing so much abundance for all, for humanity to survive, we need fundamental change in our basic economic paradigms like a basic income (which works with the market but is a human right saying everyone has a right to some fruits of the industrial commons),
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Or going further, we need some mix of a basic income and a gift economy, improved local subsistence, making work into play, resource based planning, and other things...

Something related I helped organize:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

By the way, if we moved to a basic income (a check from the government that is enough to live on each month, with no means test, funded by taxes or some other means), then it might be justified to do away with some of those other employee protections you decry, because engineers would have the freedom to say "No" and walk away. That might do a lot more to make the US competitive than the race to the bottom for US engineers that you propose.
"Freedom as the Power to Say No"
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004Widerquist.pdf

China will be where the US is soon enough (twenty years?), with a jobless recovery with economic growth but no new jobs, as China's productivity per worker continues to grow and then demand gets saturated when people there realize there is a law of diminishing returns to more goods and services (especially as people move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to want to do more of their own self-directed stuff). What then?

The best things in life are cheap or free, and if they were not, what kind of world would that be anyway? Someday the Chinese will realize that, hopefully before they finish trashing their environment. At least there is some good news about improvement on Chinese environmental policy lately, so I can hope the Chinese are moving up that curve...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China

By the way, as for why all those US worker protections are so important in the "free market", try reading "The China Price".
http://thechinaprice.org/home.html
"The book exposes a system of unregistered factories that cut corners on safety and working conditions to meet multinational companies' demands for ever-lower prices. It documents how China's export manufacturing industry allows millions of workers to move slowly out of poverty - even as they pay a price in terms of their own health. How the country's coal mining sector continues to thrive - even as it produces a stunning 70 percent of the world's coal mining deaths. And how a growing number of younger wo

Robots, AI, better design, and limited demand are probably going to take your job eventually; see Marshall Brain's "Manna" story for what it might look like:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

You can worship the "free market" abstraction all you want, and by extension the big companies that dominate it,
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
but enlightened self-interest (let alone morality) suggests you should be more on the side of the humans than an abstract concept about exchange, one that ignores externalities as well as the negative side of the concentration of wealth by using huge immortal amoral corporations that would treat any human like a piece of discardable machinery if it is profitable.

With a 21st century technosphere capable of producing so much abundance for all, for humanity to survive, we need fundamental change in our basic economic paradigms like a basic income (which works with the market but is a human right saying everyone has a right to some fruits of the industrial commons),
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Or going further, we need some mix of a basic income and a gift economy, improved local subsistence, making work into play, resource based planning, and other things...

Something related I helped organize:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

By the way, if we moved to a basic income (a check from the government that is enough to live on each month, with no means test, funded by taxes or some other means), then it might be justified to do away with some of those other employee protections you decry, because engineers would have the freedom to say "No" and walk away. That might do a lot more to make the US competitive than the race to the bottom for US engineers that you propose.
"Freedom as the Power to Say No"
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004Widerquist.pdf

China will be where the US is soon enough (twenty years?), with a jobless recovery with economic growth but no new jobs, as China's productivity per worker continues to grow and then demand gets saturated when people there realize there is a law of diminishing returns to more goods and services (especially as people move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to want to do more of their own self-directed stuff). What then?

The best things in life are cheap or free, and if they were not, what kind of world would that be anyway? Someday the Chinese will realize that, hopefully before they finish trashing their environment. At least there is some good news about improvement on Chinese environmental policy lately, so I can hope the Chinese are moving up that curve...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China

By the way, as for why all those US worker protections are so important in the "free market", try reading "The China Price".
http://thechinaprice.org/home.html
"The book exposes a system of unregistered factories that cut corners on safety and working conditions to meet multinational companies' demands for ever-lower prices. It documents how China's export manufacturing industry allows millions of workers to move slowly out of poverty - even as they pay a price in terms of their own health. How the country's coal mining sector continues to thrive - even as it produces a stunning 70 percent of the world's coal mining deaths. And how a growing number of younger wo

Every person should have a right to draw from the industrial commons, and so be able to run such websites for free without ads (Alaska has a partial basic income with the Alaska Permanent Fund); see:
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
"""
A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
        * it is being paid to individuals rather than households;
        * it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;
        * it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered.
Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.
But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.
There is a wide variety of proposals around. They differ according to the amounts involved, the source of funding, the nature and size of the reductions in other transfers, and along many other dimensions. As far as short-term proposals are concerned, however, the current discussion is focusing increasingly on so-called partial basic income schemes which would not be full substitutes for present guaranteed income schemes but would provide a low - and slowly increasing - basis to which other incomes, including the remaining social security benefits and means-tested guaranteed income supplements, could be added.
Many prominent European social scientists have now come out in favour of basic income - among them two Nobel laureates in economics. In a few countries some major politicians, including from parties in government, are also beginning to stick their necks out in support of it. At the same time, the relevant literature - on the economic, ethical, political and legal aspects - is gradually expanding and those promoting the idea, or just interested in it, in various European countries and across the world have started organizing into an active network.
"""

Thanks for the first hand report.

An alternative approach instead of censorship is to just put a heavy tax on certain media, because of the cost it may impose on society:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
"""
In economics, an externality or spillover of an economic transaction is an impact on a party that is not directly involved in the transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service. An advantageous impact is called an external benefit or positive externality, while a detrimental impact is called an external cost or negative externality. Producers and consumers in a market may either not bear all of the costs or not reap all of the benefits of the economic activity. For example, manufacturing that causes air pollution imposes costs on the whole society, while fire-proofing a home improves the fire safety of neighbors.
    In a competitive market, the existence of externalities would cause either too much or too little of the good to be produced or consumed in terms of overall costs and benefits to society. If there exist external costs such as pollution, the good will be overproduced by a competitive market, as the producer does not take into account the external costs when producing the good. If there are external benefits, such as in areas of education or public safety, too little of the good would be produced by private markets as producers and buyers do not take into account the external benefits to others. Here, overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the economic benefits and costs for all parties involved.
"""

Media that contributes to social violence, or which displaces time that could be spent on learning better solutions to social conflicts, could be considered as creating a negative externality. More on this general issue, about the dilemma between helping kids work through developmental needs to move beyond violence versus sending a message about avoiding violent solutions:
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

A violent media tax could be redistributed equally to everyone as a "basic income", or it could be used to fund other projects (including other media) that promote cooperation.
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
    http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

Here is another first hand report on someone from the US heading to Venezuela and then heading back to the USA, realizing they would never fit in for a variety of reasons (even as they admired aspects of the changes there):
    http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110706_mcr_evolution.shtml

Mutual security is a better answer than unilateral security (and even deterrence):
    http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security (sustainable, resilient infrastructure) is a better answer than extrinsic security (soldier-defended infrastructure).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

The problem is that unilateral extrinsic security theater that actually is insecure and spawns more enemies (like in Iraq) is very profitable, according to a US Major General:
    http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

So, we may need to move to a society that is moving beyond the profit motive to have true security. To do that, we need a basic income, an expanding gift economy, improved local subsistence with 3D printing and organic gardening, more resource-based planning, a push to turn work into play, and other similar things, if we are to be reasonably secure. As long as war is profitable and profits are worshiped, we will have endless war.

Censoring the games won't fix that. People tend to turn to addictive behavior when they are under stress.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
We need to improve society so there is less bad stress. One part of that is improving general human health now that we all spend so much time indoors:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Another part is making sure everyone feels secure in the basics.
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
And then more things flow from there.

Places with huge problems also tend to have legacies of intervention by foreign governments and foreign corporations. The Earth has no resource limitation problems in the long term:
"Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html

But, with robots on the way, it's easy to see why many think life is cheap because masses of human labor are no longer needed for the earlier exploitation:
"Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

That is the deeper problem we need to address as a society, how to move past the irony of having all these tools of abundance but people using them to make artificial scarcity. We need to stop using military robots to enforce a culture of work on humans and instead make robots to do the work. We need to stop building nuclear missiles to fight over oil wells on Earth and instead use the same basic technologies to produce power or make accessible resources in space (I'm a renewable energy fan more than nuclear though). Here are some other ways to move past that irony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://www.freecycle.org/
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy?page=0%2C1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C (Surviving America's Depression Epidemic)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

There are lots of solutions rather than kill off people or prevent them from being born when there is so much abundance for everyone these days through modern technology. You want to stop suffering? Break the link between a right-to-consume and being able to sell your labor on a market where automation and better design is removing good jobs every day, like people said would be a problem even back in 1964:
http://educationanddemocra

This is probably the story you remember (Manna by Marshall Brain):
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
He proposes something like a basic income:
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
But there are other approaches - a gift economy, or a local subsistence economy using 3D printers, or some other approaches.
   

The biggest challenge of the 21st century is technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

Money is a collective fantasy about rationing; how can we move beyond it? As Iain Banks wrote, money is a sign of poverty. James P. Hogan in "Voyage From Yesteryear" also envisioned a post-scarcity society that had moved beyond it.

The last time an big company recruiter sent me an inquiry, I sent back this link: :-)
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

The problem:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"School Daze links"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
"Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

Some more links about moving beyond the need to work for pay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_economy

From something I helped put together:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
"Dealing with a jobless recovery presents global society with some difficult choices about values and identity. A straightforward way to keep the current scarcity-based economic system going in the face of the "threat" of abundance (and limited demand) resulting in a related jobless recovery is to use things like endless low-level war, perpetual schooling, expanded prisons, increased competition, and excessive bureaucracy to provide any amount of make-work jobs to soak up the abundance from high-technology (as well as to take any amount of people off the streets in various ways). That seems to be the main path that the USA and other countries have been going down so far, perhaps unintentionally. Alternatively, there are a range of other options to chose from, whether moving towards a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy, or strong local communitarian economies, and to some extent, the USA and other countries have also been pursuing these options as well, but in a less coherent way. Ultimately, the approaches taken to move beyond a jobless recovery (either by creating jobs or by learning to live happily without them) involves political choices that will reflect national and global values, priorities, identities, and aspirations."

Wikipedia: A basic income is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that allows the receiver to participate in society with human dignity. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, there is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it. The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network emphasizes this absence of means testing in its precise definition, "The Basic Income Guarantee is an unconditional, government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html

A "basic income" or making work fun are other alternatives.
  http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Bob Black talks about "the abolition of work" here:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes, so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. "

These are some ways to deal with increasing joblessness, even if our economy recovers for those who still have jobs or money, which will be explored in more depth over time:

• temporary measures like unemployment insurance and retraining funds, and when those fail, letting people live with relatives who still have jobs or be homeless (the USA now has one million homeless schoolchildren, an amount that has doubled in the last two years);
• government public works like in the 1930s (infrastructure, arts, research, medicine, etc.);
• a basic income for everyone, essentially Social Security and Medicaid for all with no means testing;
• improved local subsistence like with 3D printing and organic gardening;
• a p2p gift economy (like Wikipedia and Debian GNU/Linux);
• a shorter work week (like tried in France);
• rethinking work to be more fun so it is done as play;
• alternative currencies or other forms of exchange like barter or more formal rationing;
• increasing advertising to entice people into more debt (one cause of the current economic crisis as the debt bubble burst);
• intentionally producing shoddy merchandise or things with planned obsolescence, perhaps encouraged by promoting faddism in the culture;
• more prisons (employs guards and keeps people out of the labor pool);
• more schooling (employs guards/teachers and keeps people out of the labor pool) while suppressing true education; and
• more war (employs guards/soldiers, blows up and wastes abundance, and kills or disables workers to keep them out of the labor pool).

Likely we will see a mix of all those in the future, and in fact, a mix of all those is what we have now (not that the last five options of advertising, faddism, schooling, prison, and war are recommended, even as our society currently relies on them heavily to destroy abundance and create guarding jobs). This web site will go into the details of all this over time. That list is defining the landscape of a jobless recovery, showing connections between things that dont usually seem connected. Like for example, why President Obama just suggested the school year should be longer while our best educators say compulsory school as we know it should disappear entirely.

The important thing to remember is that joblessness is not necessarily a bad thing. It means people have more time for family, friends, hobbies, and volunteerism. What is bad about formal un

Louis Kelso's idea of a basic income removes the need for many job protections. A basic income almost passed under Richard Nixon, promoted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.com/
http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_O._Kelso
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan

One is being put in place in Brazil:
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=974
"""
A senator from Brazil, Suplicy was the sponsor of the "Citizen's Basic Income" legislation that was signed into law last year. The law is grounded in the concept that an unconditional and guaranteed minimum income is the simplest and most effective step toward the eradication of poverty. It will be implemented gradually in Brazil beginning this year."
    He said today: "All people -- regardless of their ethnicity, gender, whatever -- should be able to share in the wealth of the nation. This should be done in a way that is just and provides for dignity and real freedom. Ensuring a guaranteed unconditional income does several things: It ends bureaucracy of reporting and checking on people. It eliminates the stigma attached to getting resources from the government. It does not penalize someone for earning money from a job. And it removes uncertainty."
"""

I've become more and more enamored of the idea of a "basic income" which would be essentially extending Social Security in the USA to everyone in the country (and eventually globally) regardless of need or age. The same for Medicare. It seems to me that is an easy first step for a market system to continue to function, and after that we will likely see further transformations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.usbig.net/

It's heartening to think the US Congress almost passed one under Richard Nixon. So it is not like the idea is politically impossible. And several other countries and communities have been experimenting with it recently.

A simple equation:

Jobs = (Demand - (Stockpiled_Supply - War)) / (Automation * Good_Design)

We can assume "Automation" and "Good_Design" are increasing, which tends to reduce the need for "Jobs", all other things being equal. Mainstream economics suggests "Demand" is essentially infinite -- that is, if people have two cars, they want four cars, and if they have four cars, they want one hundred cars parked in their driveway, and then even that won't be enough, they will want a thousand cars, a million cars. Clearly, stated that way, mainstream economics sounds absurd, because people only have so much time and attention they will devote to acquiring cars. So, if "Demand" is ultimately limited once most people meet their basic needs for food, water, shelter, information, and some consumer items ("the best things in life are free or cheap"), or at least "Demand" is rising less quickly than improvements in productivity "(Automation * Good_Design)", then the number of paying "Jobs" will go towards zero. And as there are less "Jobs", and so more competition for them, the remaining "Jobs" will get paid less and have worse working conditions.

The absence of good "Jobs" creates a crisis in a society that only allows people with jobs to direct the market and take goods from it (thus, the unemployed will starve, or riot, or be on unrelated small and depressing welfare payments, see Marshall Brain's Manna or described in the Triple Revolution memorandum).
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

"War" can increase jobs by destroying any stockpiled goods or existing infrastructure, requiring more goods and infrastructure, or vast stockpiles of military might intended no never be used, but "War" has become too terrible to contemplate even as stockpiles of war materials beg to be used, and in any case, building a *need* for "War" into an economic system seems inelegant and unethical, especially when "War" can so easily mean Armageddon these days.

The above is the equation I would suggest is more worth exploring these days than the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" one. That simple equation is IMHO key to understanding the next twenty years of our society, especially with the emergence of more capable robots. It would be worthwhile to plot the number of jobs over time for all sorts of assumptions of curves of demand and curves of automation and better design. One could also add in some demographic aspects of changing population sizes which I have left out for simplicity, as well ais issues of how well the market economy is functioning in terms of currency flows and hording and inflation/deflation. Remember, in the next twenty years, none of the resource constraints Peak Oilers worry about are likely to be huge, but nonetheless, the equation above might show jobs trending low enough to create

It's called a Basic Income. It solves that problem much more efficiently than any other system.

America:
http://www.usbig.net/

Europe:
http://www.basicincome.org/

Combine basic incomes with replacing the income tax by sales tax and you get the best of both worlds.