There are at least two "professions" that may not be able to be replaced by automation: caregivers and monastics. Both can be used to absorb countless hours of uncompensated time, since people do them for reasons other than material gain. (Think of parents, or good friends, as examples of caregivers who work voluntarily even in the face of material loss.)
Perhaps the key will be to help the few who are still making money (those who program the robots?) to see the benefit of sharing their wealth generously with the caregivers and monastics who are not providing a tangible product but are simply focusing on educating the hearts of others and helping others who face misfortune or difficulty. (Nothing about automation suggests that robots will somehow eliminate our inner turmoil... does it?)
Most societies have been organized around supporting people in these helping roles, so even though we may be moving beyond priests and stay-at-home moms in the conventional sense, there is no reason we cannot recreate and reinvent such roles for the swelling number of unemployed that this video predicts.
Who would argue with creating a society that has more time and more people devoted to helping each other? This sounds like a fabulous future, not a scary one!
Without a technique or mechanism, however, for supporting the dissemination and development of this view -- that helping others is in fact a benefit in itself -- it is easy to imagine a world where the gap between haves and have-notes simply widens and chaos and injustice reigns.
Sounds like a job for education and activism and reinventing our economic models. Sounds like a job for servicespace!
On Sep 3, 2014 Timothy Harrison wrote: