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I wish that I had mod points. I agree completely. There are ideas on what to do post-labor at http://marshallbrain.com/ if anyone is interested.

"We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on."

Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.

How much "work" does it take to tell robots what to do?
"PR2 Fetches Sandwich from Subway"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYRQC2iBp0

The authoritarian USSR you knew is history, and the quasi-authoritarian USA is going much the same way.
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

There were zero net new jobs created in the USA in 2000-2010 while population grew and the GDP went up by 30% or so.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comments

People can deny it and fight it all they want. Probably the best they'll accomplish to protect and obsolete old order is wipe out humanity -- I hope we do better than that.

Also, comparative advantage does not apply when there is local unemployment. Who is the "you" you are referring to in trade anyway? The people without jobs who are at the edge economically and socially in the USA? So much of what people think they know about even mainstream economics is bunk. See also, for just one example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
"The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultaneous efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."

There are at least four fundamental complementary ways to arrange most work that needs to be done:
* Volunteerism through a gift economy (Wikipedia, Linux, Freecycle)
* Through the exchange market, but softened by transfer payments like a "basic income" (or a more fragmented system like in the USA with social security, public school supports, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc.)
* By local subsistence through advanced technology like 3D printers, personal robotics, solar panels, and similar DIY stuff
* By democratic participatory resource based planning at all levels.

The fact is, neither the USSR nor the USA was talking about "socialism" when they either celebrated it or maligned it. Western Europe is a better example of what "socialism" means. See Chomsky here to see more about the truth about the USSR and the USA and how they played against each other:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-4Hv9pDicA

Lots of alternatives:

"... I feel no desire to pay people when they are perfectly capable of getting a job and supporting themselves."

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

"Me either. I can't afford it, ironically because nobody wants to manufacture anything here."

Good ironic point. We need a "basic income" and other ideas to deal with structural unemployment from automation:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

See also for how far the USA and the legacy of Steve Jobs has fallen, from 1990 and the NeXT days:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1990/02/26/73121/index.htm
"THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER FACTORY Steve Jobs has built a Next workstation plant with just about everything: lasers, robots, speed, and remarkably few defects. ... Welcome to the Next world. Here a robot that looks like a futuristic sewing machine places tiny capacitors and integrated circuits, rapid-fire, on a printed computer circuitboard. A laser zeros in on each electrical connection. Two robot arms move in tandem, one selecting parts from a bin and the other deftly inserting them into the board. After 20 minutes the board reaches the end of the assembly line, where -- finally -- a real person steps in to check it. Robots outnumber people 13 to five on this line, which turns out the brains for aging whiz kid Steve Jobs's new workstation. Not to save money: Labor accounts for only 3% to 5% of the cost of a typical computer-manufacturing operation. Instead, the automation is meant to ensure the highest possible quality. When Jobs left Apple Computer and started Next in 1985, he was determined to create a manufacturing process as advanced as the product it makes. He assigned some of his best engineers and software designers to the problem. Until recently the 40-person manufacturing staff had more Ph.D.s than the group designing the Next machine. Says Randy Heffner, vice president for manufacturing: ''Most startups don't invest in advanced automation, but that's the key to long-term success.'' ..."

But even China is automating more now for the same reasons...

Interesting link. Here is a sci-fi story about even-cheaper-than-foreign-labor AI and robotics leading to unemployed US Americans ending up in "Terrafoam" cages: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

A great essay by Philip Greenspun on why US Americans, especially women, avoid science:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."

Posts I made to the p2presearch list concerning education (it would take years to read through all the embedded links on Gatto, Holt, Goodstein, Schmidt, Honigman, Lewellyn, etc.):

* [p2p-research] College Daze links (was Re: : FlossedBk, "Free/Libre and Open Source Solutions for Education")

* [p2p-research] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow

* [p2p-research] Rebutting Communique from an Absent Future (was Re: Information on student protests)

"There will be no advanced technology building in that society in the long run, it's going to be an economic disaster as fewer and fewer will work, and eventually people will refuse to work for others, all while those, who actually create jobs will obviously move their investments somewhere, where this insane policies will not apply. The economy will be destroyed."

But the economy is already being destroyed by structural unemployment resulting from robotics and other automation; see:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm

So, the economy you are talking about defending is already history in that sense.

"People will build viruses and release them just because they will be able to and nothing will prevent them, no amount of wealth in the world will stop them, and the more resources they will have in their hands the more "interesting" experiments they will be able to devise."

The people distributing the viruses were lacking some sort of moral awareness. More wealth in the hands of parents can let them raise their children better. It can allow communities to create more interesting opportunities for kids than widespread destruction. More distributed wealth means more people can work on defenses or deal with emergent problems. More wealth distributed means fewer kids growing up with brains damaged by poor nutrition. And so on. But I agree there will always be problems. But we can still probably reduce the frequency a lot.

A basic income is more likely to break the current world of (wage) slaves and masters we have than to create one:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

But I also mention three other aspects that are important too (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning).

Things like compulsory schools and wage-slave workplaces are also main distribution points for plagues, given most people do not have the option to stay home for a long time. We should move beyond such security problems.

Beyond that, your plan takes the utopian dream of a day when machines render human labor unnecessary and turn it into a dystopian nightmare

Obligatory short story.

It's unfortunately all too believable. There are not technical obstacles currently preventing the 1.0 versions of the management software in this story, except the general unwillingness of middle management to contemplate being replaced with a computer system. I even find myself not disagreeing too much with the ubiquitous surveillance built into his utopian alternative - while I'm sure it would make me feel uncomfortable at first, I'm forced to concede that it might be necessary, and at least his system has adequate checks and balances.

Sadly, I have to agree that the issue you raise is a big potential problem (especially that those with power and wealth often use that first and foremost to preserve their relative privilege), and it is very much what the USA is already struggling through. For example, real wages have been essentially flat in the USA for the past thirty to forty years, while productivity has doubled or tripled and the money has gone to the workers not as wages but as loans:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

Things may well get much worse before they get better, before people (OWS etc.) eventually confront "the mythology of wealth":
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"In fact, the cheap-labor conservatives have counter-attacked with their own “rational” theory to justify their hierarchical world-view. Some call it “Social Darwinism”, though more politically savvy cheap-labor conservatives avoid that term. The purpose of this “rational theory” is to establish that the existing social order is the “natural order”. Elites enjoy wealth, privilege and status because of their inherent superiority. The place where this natural hierarchy is established, is that mythical place known as the “market”."

And:
"The Market as God"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/

Marshall Brain talks about that general issue here:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
"With the rank and file employees gone, all of the money in the corporation flows upward to the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will accelerate dramatically because robots allow real automation in the service sector for the first time in history. The amount of money paid to executives and shareholders will be remarkable. Meanwhile, the one million displaced employees will flow into a job market that is flooded by robotically-displaced workers. Since all major corporations with large numbers of employees will be doing the same thing, it is difficult to imagine the economy suddenly creating enough jobs to absorb all of the displaced workers. If the economy does not create new jobs for them, they will be living in government welfare dormitories. "

And also in his story "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

This is starting to happen even in China. See, for example:
"Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years"
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm
"Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions."

Or from a couple years ago:
http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen. China, once considered one of the lowest-cost automotive producers because of its supply of cheap labor, is becoming another example of rising expectations as workers demand their share of the country's growing industrial prosperity. The rash of strikes at Honda and Toyota parts factories and assembly plants in southern China this year -- with demands for substantially higher wages at the Japanese-owned companies

Sadly, I have to agree that the issue you raise is a big potential problem (especially that those with power and wealth often use that first and foremost to preserve their relative privilege), and it is very much what the USA is already struggling through. For example, real wages have been essentially flat in the USA for the past thirty to forty years, while productivity has doubled or tripled and the money has gone to the workers not as wages but as loans:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

Things may well get much worse before they get better, before people (OWS etc.) eventually confront "the mythology of wealth":
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"In fact, the cheap-labor conservatives have counter-attacked with their own “rational” theory to justify their hierarchical world-view. Some call it “Social Darwinism”, though more politically savvy cheap-labor conservatives avoid that term. The purpose of this “rational theory” is to establish that the existing social order is the “natural order”. Elites enjoy wealth, privilege and status because of their inherent superiority. The place where this natural hierarchy is established, is that mythical place known as the “market”."

And:
"The Market as God"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/

Marshall Brain talks about that general issue here:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
"With the rank and file employees gone, all of the money in the corporation flows upward to the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will accelerate dramatically because robots allow real automation in the service sector for the first time in history. The amount of money paid to executives and shareholders will be remarkable. Meanwhile, the one million displaced employees will flow into a job market that is flooded by robotically-displaced workers. Since all major corporations with large numbers of employees will be doing the same thing, it is difficult to imagine the economy suddenly creating enough jobs to absorb all of the displaced workers. If the economy does not create new jobs for them, they will be living in government welfare dormitories. "

And also in his story "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

This is starting to happen even in China. See, for example:
"Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years"
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm
"Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions."

Or from a couple years ago:
http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen. China, once considered one of the lowest-cost automotive producers because of its supply of cheap labor, is becoming another example of rising expectations as workers demand their share of the country's growing industrial prosperity. The rash of strikes at Honda and Toyota parts factories and assembly plants in southern China this year -- with demands for substantially higher wages at the Japanese-owned companies

This sounds rather like the Star Trek vision of the future, where money is not really needed, and replicators can meet all your needs - a laudable goal.

The question is, how do we get from here to there in an orderly manner? IANAEconomist, but restructuring the planetary economy doesn't look like an easy task!

In the meantime, I think some kind of provision for the excluded/jobless will have to be made - unfortunately I can see it turning out like this: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm/

Marshall Brain's Manna describes two possible social results of automation. Not a long read, and a good starting point for considering the effects of total automation.

Rather than build robots to guard prisons, why not just get the robots to do the boring work outside instead of imprisoning people for not wanting to do the work (and stealing, selling drugs, etc. for money)?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

We need "A Newer Way Of Thinking":
http://anwot.org/

Where this may all be leading, Marshall Brain's "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Why not just have a "basic income" instead, funded by a tax on robotic factories?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

This reminds me of the story Manna.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Management costs more per person than the people they supervise, if you can get rid of management you can significantly improve your profits.

There is a short story that does actually discus that particular use of technology.

Here is the chapter dealing with the Vertebrane system and it's uses.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna6.htm

Link for the interested

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

That would be here: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm. The US makes concentration camps for the poor, while Australia goes post-scarcity.

More stuff gets automated, more jobs lost, cost of living goes down because of automation, more jobs created.

I've used the same argument in the past, however, I've been somewhat swayed. Keep in mind, I'm not completely convinced that 99% of people will be out of work and robots will be doing everything. But, I do think there could be a fundamental difference between the oncoming wave of automation and the preceding ones.

The difference is in specialization. Before when new technologies replaced workers they replaced single jobs, and those people could create new jobs for themselves eventually. However, we are close (few decades) to creating humanoid robots that will be capable of doing just about any task a human does that doesn't require great intelligence. Just about every job not requiring a collage degree, from janitor, to factory work, to many service and retail will be automated. That is a huge chunk of jobs, probably over half. Go here and look at the 2008 job percentages. Many of the big categories can be outright replaced by robots. Just about all of them can be somewhat reduced.

Marshall Brain has a few interesting articles about this. He is much more dramatic about it than I am, but still interesting to consider. http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

If you don't have anything that someone will pay for you are pretty much screwed. Throughout human history, people were born with the ability to do work that others would pay for. If humanoid robots become common that could cease to be true for the first time. Combined with possible human level AI and only people who own things that are valuable (resources) will have anything that can be sold. Hopefully our society can adjust to this and spread the benefit around. But it will certainly be interesting.

Here's a link to Manna, a great read: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Marshall Brain covered this well a few years ago:

You are thinking of this story.

A similar way out of the automation trap was proposed by James Albus back in 1976. Albus died in April of 2011, but you can read about his proposal at www.peoplescapitalism.org.

The short story "Manna" gives out two possible outcomes.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

One possibility is that only the rich owns the machines and everyone else is in government housing living on welfare with no possibility of improving ones life.

The other possibility that is presented is that everyone collectively owns the robots that manufacture everything therefor everyone is rich.

"It's been shown over and over that giving out hand-outs encourages abuse and laziness."

What would you say if someone said you had to start paying $10,000 a month for breathable air supply? You'd say that was not fair, right? You would question the "mythology" behind that enclosure of the atmospheric commons you depend on, right?
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
So, why should you have to pay for access to the fruits of industrial commons and agricultural commons given the government has said all the land has been privatized (or is government owned and effectively off-limits for personal use)?

This doesn't really counter my assertion at all. Also your link sounds like a lot of anti-capitalism stuff I've read; it even calls property rights and contract rights "mythology", but never backs up these claims with anything other than a vague "society is unfair!" cry, and doesn't propose any actual ways to fix the problems that society and our current economic system do have. If you don't have property rights, then how do you determine who can do what with what resources? Have a giant totalitarian government make all the decisions using a command economy? We've already seen that that doesn't work at all.

So, sure, some of wealth is work. But most is not. So, one half the GDP could be a basic income, and the other half would motivate those who needed motivating by money. That would be a basic income of US$2000 per month per citizen, leaving a GDP from 1993 or so to motivate those who needed motivation. Weren't people motivated enough to do a lot of stuff in 1993?

$2k per month is poverty income. It might keep people from starving, but that's about it. But this still doesn't answer why anyone should continue to work if they're going to get paid whether they work or not. We're nowhere near the point where robots can mop the floors and clean the toilets everywhere. Now if this income were a base level, and anything more you earned was on top of that (and didn't reduce it, as it does in most welfare situations, encouraging people to not work), this might be useful; it seems to work ok for Alaskans and Norwegians after all. Instead of having a welfare system with the attendant bureaucracy and effort spent looking for cheaters, just give everyone a flat $2k per month, no questions asked, and at least everyone would have enough to eat and pay for rent in some craphole.

Our society is becoming so productive that it only takes a very few to provide for the many, given technology is an amplifier. It may take thousands of people to contribute to Debian GNU/Linux, but it provide software for billions of people.

Society can't run on people sitting around just writing software. Physical work has to be done at some point: bathrooms need to be cleaned, buildings need to be built, cars need to be repaired, factories have to be run, food needs to be cooked, etc. Automation has indeed done amazing things in some factory operations, where the work is extremely repetitive. But I don't see any robots able to clean bathrooms, either now or in the next 100 years. Someone has to do the crap jobs.

On how robots (or AI or better design or voluntary social networks) are going to take your job most likely pretty soon anyway:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm

As an engineer, I think this guy's predictions are about 50-100 years too optimistic. He talks about fully-automated retail checkout in 3 years, which is total BS. I used to work at a company making retail payment terminals; they're no different now than they were 10-15 years ago, except that now everyone uses debit transactions instead of credit (and which requires far more security), and they're switching from boring-looking old terminals to ones with bigger, fancier touchscreens so they can show video ads on them. Huge improvement there.... Robotic

"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."

Good ironic catch.

I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.

Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).

I do think Isaac Asimov foresaw the economic problems posed by robotics in a capitalist society, like Marshall Brain has:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?

But, there are solutions for capitalism besides banning robots, such as a "basic income", like I talk about at my site and elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s". :-)

"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."

Good ironic catch.

I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.

Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).

I do think Isaac Asimov foresaw the economic problems posed by robotics in a capitalist society, like Marshall Brain has:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?

But, there are solutions for capitalism besides banning robots, such as a "basic income", like I talk about at my site and elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s". :-)

"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."

Good ironic catch.

I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.

Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).

I do think Isaac Asimov foresaw the economic problems posed by robotics in a capitalist society, like Marshall Brain has:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?

But, there are solutions for capitalism besides banning robots, such as a "basic income", like I talk about at my site and elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s". :-)

"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."

Good ironic catch.

I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.

Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).

I do think Isaac Asimov foresaw the economic problems posed by robotics in a capitalist society, like Marshall Brain has:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?

But, there are solutions for capitalism besides banning robots, such as a "basic income", like I talk about at my site and elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s". :-)

The agreements could be standardized by convention... Or by legal requirements (like Nolo Press contributes to). That might eliminate 90% of lawyer's workload. People googling on advice can also reduce the need for paid advice, or allow individuals to use what little they really need more effectively (so, less billable hours).

See also Marshall Brain's Manna on breaking down tasks and deskilling them, even lawyering.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

If you can just make lawyers twice as productive with some tools, what happens to half the lawyers we have now?

What if with limited AI you can make lawyers 10X more productive? What do 90% of the current lawyers do, considering lawyers getting out of school now are finding now jobs for them?
http://lawschoolscam.blogspot.com/
http://www.lawyerswithdepression.com/

Or do we get a legal arms race of pointless lawsuits to keep lawyers employed? IIRC the USA has something like 2X to 5X more lawyers per capita than much of the rest of the world to begin with...
http://www.averyindex.com/lawyers_per_capita.php
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_in_the_world_has_most_lawyers_per_capita

My site has a lot about post-scarcity economic alternatives to a collapsing exchange economy in the face of the decline of the value of moct paid human labor:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

Marshall Brain came up with a couple scenarios in Manna, an interesting read. People don't sit in the dark and starve, but something comparable.

I vaguely understand the economic theory that says this is good in the long run. However, I have always wondered what we will do as a society when there is nothing left to do...

Marshall Brain's science fiction novella, Manna, is based on this premise.

Manna is an AI that was developed to replace middle "manna"gement at fast food restaurants. As its usefulness expands, workplace norms change, and the progression ends with... well, that'd be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that the end state of an economy driven by rotework to an economy driven by AIs isn't a function of what technology you use, but a function of other variables.

Marshall Brain described two possibilities of the social impact of ubiquitous robots in Manna -- definitely worth a read.

This is great! Lots and lots of cheap, usable housing for everyone!

Sounds like Terrafoam to me.

I highly recommend reading Manna. It's a quick read, and a junior effort at writing, but the ideas are well worth contemplation.

I just wonder who is going to buy all those goods and services when we are all replaced by robots.

Essentially the thesis behind Marshall Brain's novella Manna.

Non-Spoiler: It has unpredictable effects that vary as a function of socioeconomic model.

(Variables don't, and constants aren't. Whether this is a bug or a feature is left as an exercise for the reader.)

However he did not take into account the douchebag factor. The lazy bum who does not want to work. So you have to make him work. Then it becomes an authoritative society. Communism works until someone figures out they dont have to work as hard and can get the same amount of benefit out of it. However we have a *HUGE* problem. Automation. Eventually everything will be automated, *EVERYTHING*. What then? Who works? There is no one needed to do work as machines do it all, even our thinking. Eventually when it is all automated what do we do?

Essentially the premise of this short science fiction story: Manna, an AI for automating restaurant management tasks, starts to get really good at automating the sorts of mundane business processes we all take for granted, and as the economy is optimized for efficiency, society gets interesting. (Meanwhile, half a world away, another group of AIs are optimizing for a different metric...)

"you still have to send out ROBOTS in trucks to keep the infrastructure functional."

FTFY.

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

In what way is MobileWorks different to this?

You're right. Here is a 12 minute YouTube video I made that talks about a balance between five interwoven economies that shifts with cultural change and technological change:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems. "

A PDF file of the presentation is here:
      http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf

Other related stuff by me:
    http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

But right now, pretty much not one gets this. Mainstream economists are in denial. They just assume infinite demand (not limits from environmentalism, voluntary simplicity, or a law of diminishing or negative returns), that robots and AI and better design and voluntary social networks can't replace most paid human labor, that wealth be evenly distributed (not centralized to the owners of capital), that the mean on the bell curve on IQ will suddenly jump globally from 100 (remember, half below) to 200 to everyone can have great high technology creative jobs, and so on.

Some alternative economists have called for change, but are so far mostly ignored:
    http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/

Anyway, I've put all my resources into understanding these issues and telling peopel about solutions to the point of my own family's economic collapse. But for the most part no one cares; well, I should really say, many people care do about the problem, or say they care, (especially when it effects them personally or someone they care about), but most people just want a solution that does not entail any substantial change to the status quo. It seems our current political and economic leadership would rather drive our society off a cliff to collapse rather than consider things like a basic income, expanded gift economy, better democratic resource based planning, promoting local subsistence via 3D printing and organic gardnening robots, and so on.

Anyway, there are solutions if we can find the collective social will to put them in place. Already the US averages about US$700 per month per citizen in payments for social security, schooling, unemployment, and disability. We could bring that up to US$1000 or even $2000 a month. And we could get rid of or shorten patents and copyrights and do other things to promote a gift economy. And so on. Someday we will probably do all those things or similar ones if we are to survive and thrive. It's just a question of how much suffering will happen before then.

But, as Martin Ford said, while military planners are planning for and funding the development of robots that can do tasks in unstructured battlefields, economists continue to assume robots and AI will never take over most work in a highly structured factory or office.

See also, by Marshall Brain:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Two options then, a neo-luddite movement, as seen in AI and elsewhere, or bootstrapping a star trek like economy.

Interesting analogy, thanks.

Friendly AI is more likely to get built if we upgrade our economy first:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2009-August/005797.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

The main problem with this idea (other than the fact that it is a paradoxically self-defeating idea) is that they are comparing modern popular culture with past intellectual culture.

Do they not remember a not so distant time when "nerd" and "geek" were insults in mainstream culture? Computer geeks only get any respect today because they make the wheels turn for everyone else. It's the same sort of respect a airplane pilot or train conductor gets.

My grandfather had to defy his father in order to graduate from high school because his father felt that much education was useless...the past is full of such stories that just get forgotten with the passage of time.

In any case, what this writer is observing is a sort of Jevons Paradox for information. As the efficiency of exchanging information electronically has increased, it has become more and more heavily used...and in particular it is being used for more and more things that would have not been worthwhile when efficiency was lower (and therefore the cost higher). As one might expect, most of the things that would not be worthwhile at a high cost are not particularly worthwhile. Usually it's because the information has little to no practical or intellectual value ("I'm eating a delicious sandwich"), but it can also be because the idea is unpolished and unready.

This second case really changes our perception of the emergence of world-changing ideas even in intellectual circles. In the olden days, a new idea would seemingly emerge fully formed from out of the blue. One day you open the paper and there's an article on this newfangled "airplane" thing that just made its first flight yesterday in North Carolina. Perhaps instead you walk into a bookstore and at the recommendation of one of your friends you pick up copy of this Nietzsche guy's book. For most consumers of ideas in this era, there's a clear dividing line between the world before the idea and the world after. However, for the originator of the idea there's not such a clear line. Big ideas have long private and semi-public histories before they reached their final public form. In the electronic age, we are more likely to be privy to this long history. When the big breakthrough happens we're much less likely to realize its importance, because its really just an incremental but important step up from what we knew before. In this way, even highly intelligent people can miss big changes as they occur. Instead, we usually notice years later...when we wake up one morning and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A ROBOT CLEANING MY FLOOR.

It'll be interesting to look back and see which big ideas stand the test of time. There's a good chance it will be the ideas of intellectuals that few people know about or take seriously today, like this guy: http://marshallbrain.com/ or this guy http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

Those are some pretty big ideas if you ask me...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
"In economics, an externality (or transaction spillover) is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices,[1] incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit. A benefit in this case is called a positive externality or external benefit, while a cost is called a negative externality or external cost."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
"The process of enclosure has sometimes been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. "

Anyway, AC, so that is the kind of reasons you got screwed by the system, and why you are poor when your current birthright is currently about 1/7-billionth of the Earth and ultimately the same percentage of the solar system or beyond. You have a right to part of our cultural and technical capital, but you deny that right for yourself, and for everyone else. See also, on why wealth comes from more than present-day labor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit

And that is why the first part of this "Manna" story by Marshall Brain may well be your future (and for the rest of us, too):
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

The problem in the USA, which has been pursuing regressive neoliberalism for decades, is that the US Republicans are the worst sort of Socialists, who privatize profits (Enclosure) while socializing costs (Externalities). A truly socialist country would not do that. As for your suggestion of "America, love its regressive neoliberalism or leave it", well, people can't move as easily as capital encoded in internet packets -- they have family issues, language issues, cultural issues. So most people are stuck in the USA as it goes down the toilet. The USA may well take the whole world with it too, given all its stockpiled WMDs (which is another reason to stay and try to reform it, since where are you gonna hide from widespread US-originated plagues, nuclear fallout, and killer robots?). See also:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
"Neoliberalism As Water Balloon"
http://vimeo.com/6803752

Meanwhile, you are just defending your own assailants because they have misled you with their self-serving "mythology of wealth":
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402

That said, local subsistence is one way forward, but so is a basic income, a gift economy, and better democratic planning at all levels of our society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Thanks for the reply. I still think the situation is more complex than you outlined, and you are stuck in just viewing this through one lens of "regulation is bad". But what about managing "Externalities" through taxes, subsidies, and regulation?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

See also (though it ignores the value of health and community):
    "Marxism of the Right"
    http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism."

You think China and Japan and so on are less "socialistic" than the USA?

Neoliberal economics has kept real wages flat for thirty years in the USA, which is part of the reason for the current economic crisis. Related:
    http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Jix4opZuY

Also, the US government would have plenty of money without two (or is it five?) recent needless wars and the Bush tax cuts for the wealth.

All sorts of technologies have been subsidized in the past. Railroads were heavily subsidized, for example.

If you look at solar panels, costs are now dropping for the same reasons your computer chip costs are dropping, a lot of R&D and investment in that area. There is now, according to one report I read, as much research going into PV solar in two years as the entire amount invested in research on it since it was invented. There is a chart of falling prices here:
    http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices

That price decrease has little to do with government subsidies (other than pump-priming, to offset all the subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear, given externalities of those have been generally ignored and "socialized".)

The bottom line: the USA is falling apart because Republicans make the worst socialists -- they privatize gains while socializing costs. Real socialist countries don't do that. That is why Western Europe, in general, is a much happier place than the USA for most people, and most people live longer there. As is Canada. Unfortunately, people can not flow over borders as easily as capital, otherwise much of the USA might just move somewhere with access to health care, cheap college, and so on (those who don't watch Fox News. :-) Though with that said, and it is joking obviously, since cultural ties and family ties keep most people rooted where they are short of a shooting civil war or other broad physical disaster, there are still many good things about US culture, like freedom of speech, which can still be better than in some other countries. But it seems the list of things better about the USA than other countries is getting shorter and shorter.

However, on top of that, there are broad trends from the centralization of wealth due to the increasing value of capital in production relative to human labor, which indeed undermines the paid value of most human labor (and not just in the USA, but eventually everywhere, which is why we will eventually see a new economic system for the 21st century with stuff like a basic income, a gift economy, better planning, and more advanced local subsistence production):
    http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

To agree with your broad point: http://www.moneyasdebt.net/
See the "Money as Debt II - Promises Unleashed" video. Related except:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxo_XPdpI_s

It seems to me that once money has moved to the casino economy (like currency speculation), it is no longer available for use in the real economy. This could cause a currency crisis in the real economy, even though the total amount of currency in the system might be huge.

Robotics are going to have the same effect of a concentration of wealth, according to Marshall Brain.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

"The Pharaoh was not God."

First, you wrote an interesting mix of things in your reply, so thanks. On this point,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion#Divine_pharaoh
"Egyptologists have long debated the degree to which the pharaoh was considered a god. It seems most likely that the Egyptians viewed royal authority itself as a divine force. Therefore, although the Egyptians recognized that the pharaoh was human and subject to human weakness, they simultaneously viewed him as a god, because the divine power of kingship was incarnate in him. He therefore acted as intermediary between Egypt's people and the gods.[25]"

Today, "The Market" is often seen as "God" in the USA, as suggested by Harvey Cox, Harvard theologian:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/

My point on hunters/gatherers is that we might soon have technology that lets people with access to land use solar panels to collect power for 3D printers that can print more solar panels and 3D printers, along with mining robots and agricultural robots. So, what do you call that lifestyle? See also Marshall Brain's Manna story.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

We don't need "money" to buy food if we have the land and time and tools to grow it ourselves, or others give it to us (as we give them things), or if the government plans well to produce enough food and distribute it to those who need it, or if, sadly, people feel compelled to steal it (although theft is defined differently in different places, like if deer are "the kings" or not or if wild berries can be picked by anyone on undeveloped property). Those are all alternative ways people get food.

That is why I suggest there have always been five interwoven economies, of which exchange is only one (the others being subsistence, gift, planned, and theft):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Right now, in our society, exchange is dominant, though it is coupled with a growing rich/poor divide and flat real wages for 30+ years (despite productivity doubling or tripling during that time with the extra value just going to the top 1%). The system is failing in part because capitalism does not work if wealth is too concentrated. The wealthy tend to pull their money out of the real economy and put it in the "casino" economy of stuff like currency speculation, r into government bonds that finance wars, or even just by buying up all the land speculatively from other and keeping it idle etc..

I agree with you on the dysfunctional make-work aspects of our society, and explored that here, outlining many "transactions of decline" that can be used to create jobs, war being one of those transactions of decline, but others include endless bureaucracy, endless schooling, expanded prisons, increased sickness, and other things:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Or we can try to move beyond "work"; some ideas on that by others:
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjHTrwCstcM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ArkJmUOIqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neNwAZSBMb0

I don't think v

It's not just sci-fi, I know I've been saying this for years too.

I truly believe that eventually society will end up in some variation of the sci-fi utopia we see so frequently, where automation and technological progress allow people to no longer worry about financial burdens, and simply do whatever they enjoy, or work to better themselves and humanity. A world where everyone is "wealthy" and where money no longer rules our lives.

Unfortunately, I also strongly believe that things will get much much worse before we even start heading that direction. As things stand right now, if a manager replaces 100 people with 1 machine, he gets a big bonus, and those 100 people lose their jobs. The economy can absorb that to some extent for a limited time (more available people can be put to work accomplishing more things) however as you continue to automate more and more, you do eventually run out of things for those people to do. This generates high unemployment at the bottom, while making the people at the top very rich. Eventually though a couple of things happen. First the poor people at the bottom no longer have any money to inject in to the economy, and the rich people simply have nowhere to get their money from anymore, and the whole thing crumbles under it's own weight. The second thing that happens is mass rioting, insurrection, and widespread revolt (or generally, a big mess that I know I don't want to be around for!)

I would love to believe that humanity is capable of making the transition from where we are today, to the utopian future I believe in without going through full out civil war, and complete economic breakdown... but unfortunately history and human nature indicate that this is not likely.

One of my favourite sci-fi stories related to this is http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm I find that some parts of it hit a little to close to reality, With a rather novel way of transitioning to utopia... I don't know if it's workable, but it is certainly interesting to read.

This is a good time to reread Marshall Brain's Manna, a short story about an automated manager system that turned the whole country into a jobless prison.

Obligatory reading: Manna - an online short story by Marshall Brain that looks at these scenarios.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but back in the 80s were promised expert systems that would do these things and free us up for leisure time. Trouble is, instead of leisure time we're getting pink slips and a one way ticket to the gutter we're schedule to die in. Thing is, I've yet to hear a compelling solution to the problem of automation that doesn't just boil down to 1) Anyone w/o jobs dies of starvation or 2) Some form of socialism.

You might find this story interesting - it deals with this exact issue.

And yes, you are, essentially, right. As we get closer to economy where scarcity is less and less of an issue (at least for basic things), capitalism starts to break down. So far we've been dealing with this by adding more and more government regulation crutches to keep the old beast working, but you can only do that for so long.

And conveniently I just made a 12 minute YouTube video with some answers (or at least good questions) about that, talking about a balance between five interwoven economies that shifts with cultural change and technological change:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

A PDF file of the presentation is here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf

More related stuff:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
    http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
  http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Still, in general, you raise good questions. Ones that are ultimately political, even as many mainstream economists might imply they are just technical issues...