Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to phase out the existence of money than to attempt to make enough work for everyone to keep busy?
I think I agree with the core of your argument, but not your conclusion. Yes, our economic problems are distribution problems and not production problems, but I don't think getting rid of our most effective tool for allotting distribution is going to help much.
The problem is that this:
In a capitalist society like ours a person is only worth their salt if they provide some valuable labor to society.
is blatantly false. In the capitalist society that I'm in at least, the people who receive the most "salt" are those that do the least valuable labor. They all make their money by creating or abusing a distribution problem of one kind or another.
It is thus my prediction that the people who will make the most money from robots are those who create the most artificial problems in their distribution (probably through some horrifying patent abuse, but there are other ways).
Even with these problems, we can't just get rid of money; besides a dozen other problems, we need something to say "this person only gets so much stuff," because there is real scarcity. We don't need to get rid of money, just find better ways of deciding who gets it.
Slashdot Mirror
White plastic around the keyboard? Do you know how that's going to look after one day of not-so-clean hands resting on it?
Actually that's just the lighting. If you look at the other pictures you can see that it's orange around the keyboard too.
The problem is that this:
is blatantly false. In the capitalist society that I'm in at least, the people who receive the most "salt" are those that do the least valuable labor. They all make their money by creating or abusing a distribution problem of one kind or another.It is thus my prediction that the people who will make the most money from robots are those who create the most artificial problems in their distribution (probably through some horrifying patent abuse, but there are other ways).
Even with these problems, we can't just get rid of money; besides a dozen other problems, we need something to say "this person only gets so much stuff," because there is real scarcity. We don't need to get rid of money, just find better ways of deciding who gets it.