At our stage of philosophical evolution...

If I cannot...it would be because you are being pig-headed.

LOOK at what I actually wrote.

Right now we could get to the point where...

Are you actually telling me we cannot get to that point?

Are you actually saying, "No...we cannot get there?"

If you are not doing that...then what are you in disagreement with me on?

If you are not doing that...let's go on to another sentence I wrote where you truly are in disagreement.

 

I have pondered the same questions.

One reason for working is to provide a purpose and meaning for life. What would we humans do if we didn't have to work? Play video games?

 

My stock answer is:

Spend more time with family and friends, truly tend to the kids, tend to the lawn, tend to the house, clean up our neighborhoods, pick up stray junk in our parks, play more golf, tennis, go bowling more often, see more plays...or act in more plays, read more books and essays, write more books and essays, visit shut-ins, volunteer to clean along highways, bake cakes, make cookies, wash and vacuum the car, create art, write poetry, plant flowers, get more exercise, help neighbors and elderly people with small house jobs...

...and a thousand other things.

I'll be 83 in a few months...and I do not have time for all the things I want to do and enjoy doing.

 

Many of the things you mention count as work, like tending the lawn (which is easily automated). Most of the others are just alternative ways of entertaining yourself, are just space fillers for empty lives, like video games, but classier.

 

Of course some of that stuff is work. I have nothing against work. I just think people should not be forced to work in order to exist.

I you want to think of a life filled with the things I listed as "empty lives"...nothing I can say about it.

Are you of the opinion that the ONLY non-empty life...is one of toil for money...toil in order to exist?

 

I think maybe I do. But I don't view it as "toil for money" but struggle to overcome adversity. There is a dignity, or at least a possibility for dignity, in such a life absent in the life which merely pursues amusing hobbies. One might envy the man who has the leisure to pursue his hobbies, but not admire him.

 

I don't see real evidence that we're going to be left with no more than amusing hobbies.

It may well be the case that we'll need more education in order to maintain the same standard of living as the rate of change in our economy increases.

 

I am more pessimistic than you, but whatever the reality it is an interesting question to ponder.

There is a definite limit to what the average human can learn. We need more efficient education than more of it. I doubt the average college grad of these days know more what the average high school grad knew 100 years ago.

 

Yes, I would add that vocational education needs to get stepped up considerably. Those left high and dry when auto and other manufacturing changed needed to have had opportunity to develop skills that would be in demand.

Comprehensive public high schools didn't start becoming common until after WWII. And, the content that students need to be exposed to has risen rapidly.

 

I just cannot conceive of enough people developing skills that will be so necessary that any company will pay decent wages to acquire.

But perhaps I am wrong.

 

Are you questioning whether corporations will at least partially subsidize the continuing education of their employees? Numerous companies. Many don't limit such subsidies to topics of direct interest to the mainline business. They find that education is of general benefit to the company.

In the trades, there are numerous certification courses and other types of education.

The problems in manufacturing have come when there are significant changes in process, products or facility location that have left workers high and dry without having developed capabilities that made them attractive to other employers.

Our economy is changing faster than in the past. People can't afford to try to ride out a career in one type of job.

 

Why must it? I may agree that it would be better if it did, but that's not the same as saying that it will happen. Those humans who succeed in providing value to others often benefit from the situation as is, so I see no incentive to change. Those times when we've tried to resolve the problems, other problems have turned up, and I fail to see how those problems can be decoupled from the proposed solution.

 

Okay. You are more pessimistic about the issue than I.

Perhaps you are right.

 

I don't think I am pessimistic, I think future us will think outside of the box compared to us, much like we have thought outside previous philosophical boxes. I don't think the final answer is going to be that simple an allocation solution.

 

We obviously disagree.

Tell me what you want me to say...and I'll see if I can say it.

 

It just seems dangerous to try to predict where a solution will come from and what it will look like.

 

There is no reason to believe that humans would be satisfied with a world where they had no challenges. For that reason, simply supplying all life necessities would not bring peace or contentment. We will have to be much more inventive than that.

 

Someone has to pay for the material for the machines.. and food and nourishment are crucial for life we're going to have 12 billion people on this planet in 50 years

 

It is far from certain that there will be (or even could be) 12 billion humans on earth. Also, 'paying' for things could easily become a thing of the past. Just because it's always been that way is no argument that it has to be.