Originally Posted by
tandempower
Everyone is always afraid that if they become redundant to corporations, the corporations will starve them out of existence, but what is the purpose of the economy and technological progress except to give people more free time to live a better life?
The truth is that with advances in automation and so on we don't all need to work and we could all live lives of much more leisure if there was a way to distribute the wealth. The main wealth distribution system we have now is paid work, but since all essential work can be performed by a small portion of the population, we have had to invent jobs (as I have said before) like barista and tour guide and pet groomer and financial advisor to keep everybody working. It took a lot of creativity to invent all those rather superfluous jobs, and it will take a lot more to invent the next generation of non-essential jobs if AI and robots put a whole new raft of workers out of business.