Zkuq said:
I know what you meant and I agree with it. I just don't see it happening under current legislation or perhaps even the current economic system. But as much as I'd like to see companies consider the long-term picture, I don't think they are going to do it until it directly cuts into their profits, which may never even happen because of environmental pressures from other companies. I see a few possibilities for coping with the situation. The first one is that people find new jobs robots can't do (at least yet), and get their income and pay their taxes that way. I'm sure some people will manage to do just that, but I don't think it will be enough. Alternatively, governements will have to find the money to support very large amounts of people financially. Funding that will of course be a huge challenge. Personally I'm expecting companies themselves to be taxed more heavily as their profits increase with robotization and they can afford to pay more taxes. Won't happen easily though, and I'm sure other alternatives will be explored. Or perhaps the money will be taken from the rich, like you suggested, but it's probably even harder to do that than it is to tax the companies instead of the people behind them. And of course it's entirely possible that some completely new ideas surface. All in all, I expect robotization to bring huge societal changes with it. What exactly they might be is difficult to predict, but the transition period is probably going to be quite difficult. In an extreme case, robots would do almost all work in the end, and people would be free do spend their lives as they wish with no worries about work, but I'm not sure that's even possible in a very, very long time. |
I literally agree with all of what you said. Very well laid out.
It will be interesting to watch if it still happes during our lifetime for sure. Somehow people always think that revolutionary stuff like that wont happen during their lifetime.
