I don’t think it’s outrageous to assume that as technology advances there will be less and less need for human labor, eventually we will arrive at point where nearly everything is automated. What then will become of capitalism? What kind of economic system will exist in this futuristic scenario?
Where there is no scarcity, there is no economy. So yes, there would be no capitalist organization of labor (or democratic-socialist, or communist, or whatever).
To extend it further, let’s imagine the following scenario; everything is automated, everyone has their robot slaves that produces goods for them and does whatever they want for them. Yet, these robots cannot do one task: say, they are not good massagists. Then, those people that like massages, and that can’t get them for free, will massage others for money, which they can later on redeem for massages. Of course, someone that gives worse massages would not be able to price his services has higher as good massagists. So, a market economy would be formed…
the need will be for education to continue keeping up with cutting edge technologies, to ensure there isn’t a growing populace of structurally unemployed that would exacerbate social tranfer payments (to the unproductive, naturally). Automation has already made it so that agricultural employment need not be more than 3 percent of the population, versus the 60 percent a century earlier - allowing for the broadening of skills and knowledge that became the engine for all the products we enjoy today. As technology gets ever more sophisticated, so demand will change to higher and higher levels of products that we value. And it’s inevitable that Man will continue to explore the settlement of space and the ocean - still in their infancy. Such new explorations will require new necessities, and so new inventions. And the neverending realm of cyberspace will mean greater levels of knowledge to trailblaze into its unchartered regions (of the human mind) too. So future labor will be for much more cerebral efforts in a hundred years or more.
I think the biggest thing to realize is that there’s no reason that we’ll ever run out of new things to invent and new technologies to implement. As long as we never stop coming up with new things, this question will never become important.
Donny-with-an-A, I’ll go a step further and say that there’ll never be a worry of that happening - because of Man’s insatiable desire to know all and be all. It’s in our very nature to never stop trying to get to a better state, so that even when the day comes that we’ve almost fully satisfied our shelter, food and health problems for the multitude … that will only make for a more determined effort to explore all aspects of the universe and existence. It’s actually inevitable, short of an unexpected cataclysm of course.
Heartily agreed. Machines have been doing more and more jobs for over a hundred years, and still unemployment is very low. For every machine you make, somebody’s got to build it, maintain it, program it, power it, etc.
I read a study once about how the amount of time spent on household work has actually increased since before the invention of the vacuum, the microwave, the dishwasher, etc. More machines begat more work, not less.
The first lesson of economics is that demand for goods is infinite.
Please stop wasting our time.
I hope that never happens. The Terminater movies spring to mind.
But I remember reading in my 9th grade social sciences textbook (which was written in the 80’s) that by the year 2000 technology will be so advanced and automated the average person might be able to retire by their mid 30’s.
“But I remember reading in my 9th grade social sciences textbook (which was written in the 80’s) that by the year 2000 technology will be so advanced and automated the average person might be able to retire by their mid 30’s.”
Gee then they were only off by a factor of 2.5 (ie. @ 75 yrs.) - not bad by today’s outcomes, where the average public works project can be off by as much as 6 X