When humans stopped needing horses to pull plows we didn’t share our newfound tractor based wealth with the horses, we sold them to glue factories.

I say that we will not have idle hands.

When robot-produced goods are cheap and abundant, human produced goods will be rare, pricey, and therefore deemed superior.

You already see this with the rise of artisanal goods and hand-stitching on your luxury handbag.

I suspect that human-facing jobs will become common, as ‘help’ becomes a status symbol. Personal trainers, masseurs, nannies, private chefs, and life coaches are probably just the leading edge of this trend. I can imagine a future where rolling with an entourage will become the way to say you’ve made it.

I’ve written a bit more about this idea here: http://thomasthethinkengine.com/2014/07/31/face-age-the-economics-of-employment-in-the-robot-revolution/

I’m saying we probably don’t need a socialist fantasy but I’m willing to resort to one if necessary, if that’s what it takes to get my personal robot. :)

I doubt we actually disagree about this!

Note that I’m arguing against a particularly dumb but popular position (popular among even the tech clueful, as evidenced by the Martin Ford book): that automation will hurt the economy overall. I concede that it may hurt income equality and that that might be bad. Just not so bad that we should try to slow down progress in robotics.

So, you need to revise your argument then. You have to claim that even if 90% of existing jobs are destroyed, net employment won’t plummet.

You can’t just argue that restdristibution will take care of the problem without resorting to some socialist fantasy!

Mostly I think that even when robots can perform all unskilled labor better than humans, more than 10% of humans will still earn a living just fine. Historically that has been the case. Before the industrial revolution most people had full-time jobs in agriculture (ie, growing their own food) and then technology happened and destroyed literally 98% of those jobs. Humans figured out other ways to make a living.

So destroying 90% of jobs doesn’t mean leaving 90% of people twiddling their thumbs. But even if it did, I don’t see that as a reason to try to slow down the progress of robotics. I’d rather fight for better redistribution than fight against technology in hopes of keeping the redistribution from being as necessary.

I don’t think I saw anyone even acknowledge anyone else’s arguments. Though to be fair, most of the comments were unthreaded, so maybe they just skipped all the other comments.

In any case, good article. Here’s hoping that your comments section is more sane.