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[Cthulhu]

Catalhuyuk is what you're thinking of.

Also, he's right.  Someone has to maintain the machines, someone has to supervise the people maintaining, if it's a union thing you need four or five guys standing around (I keed, I keed), someone has to make the machines and someone needs to make the parts to make the machines.

And again, this is all ignoring the services half of goods'n'services, which is what makes up most of the First World economy.

[Creaca]

At least until you manufacture robots that can preform maintenance on other robots, including other maintenance robots.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I ... I already mentioned the point about people needing to make the machines!

And I'm not convinced that the service / information economy is safe in the long-term. Honestly we just need Indian companies and Chinese companies heavily subsidized by their governments to outperform ours (to deliver the same service at a lower cost). It's going to happen.

As individual workers, if we search for a service job, we are no longer competing with the 30,000 people in our home towns. And no longer with the the 300 million Americans. Now it's the 1,000 million Indians and 1,300 million Chinese in addition to those.

The counterexample I read was the weaving of fine cloth. It requires skill on the worker's part, and very expensive and specialized machinery. Whereas you can start up a programming company anywhere at $500 a desktop plus $200 for a desk and chair, to put an empoyee to work at a machine loom you need to put out quite a lot more and you can't retool those machines the same way you can a computer. Because of that, northern Italy has a strong textile manufacture that has not yet been usurped by everyone else in the world.

It's in that way that I suggest an economy strongly rooted in manufactures can be more stable, if less profitable in the short term, than one devoted so strongly to services.

[MrWiggles]

When efficiency in society happen to reduce work force needed for an industry, those peepels never stay out of work, new industry become possible because of it. Just because we cant think of the new industry to employee these peeples in the future does not mean it wont happen.

When we settle into civilizations such as Ur or Cutalhuluk (I murder that name!), away from hunter gathers, less peeples were needed to gather foodstuffs. We say other industry propping up, such as art, pottery, police, acting and so on.

What is exactly stopping new industry from popping up in this thought experiments?

You're right!

It's too bad we don't value artists, writers, actors, and musicians enough in our society. Mine anyway. It seems like the only ones who succeed (as in, able to lead a comfortable lifestyle) in these fields are the rare superheroes. I'd like to see the average professional musician be able to survive by creating good music. Right now it just doesn't work that way. You have to know people, and get lucky.

But you're right, there may be new industries that open up. We've seen that happen with the Internet. But the same efficiency tools that make other industries fire all their workers would probably apply to the new industries.

Admittedly there are some industries today that don't benefit much from the efficiencies of the Internet. Such as silk production. So perhaps there will come industries that for whatever reason don't benefit from efficiency technology. And those could be the ones people are hired to work in.

If we dont value artisans then why are there celebrities?  And noting not all celebrities are not artisans. There Golf Stars, Basketball Stars, Actors, Singers they are common household name.

The reason why there are more artisan out of work then in, is not really because you need to get lucky, but because there no demand for them.

The demand is growing, there /way/ more working artisan then there was a hundred years ago. And way more at that time then the century before it.

Also, we cant over look that most artisans are bad. Most writers cant write (see fan fiction), most singers cant sing (see american idol), most actors cant act (see syfy and chiller movies).

[LeoLeonardoIII]

But these people are not professionals - they are hobbyists - and if they are professionals but create bad art they shouldn't expect people would buy it.

Yes we have celebrities, but how many? Several hundred? There are far more actors than that. Yes we have musicians who rake in the big money, but how many?

I mean that a professional musician who never wins a Grammy should still be able to make a living.

[smigenboger]

There may be a solution.....closing the efficiency loop. Have the needle parts-makers begin to work on becoming self-sufficient again, until the surplus of items dimenishes. If the people can break from the system, they can restart the cycle before it comsumes them entirely

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Good idea.

Although by doing that he's effectively giving up some efficiency, so it's like asking the company to arrange everyone's desks inconveniently so they won't get as much done.

But people should reclaim some lost power by learning to do things for themselves. Like baking their own bread, starting a little vegetable garden. Do you know, some people out there don't cook? They don't sew a button back on? They don't wash their own dog? Crazy, I tell you.

[MrWiggles]

But these people are not professionals - they are hobbyists - and if they are professionals but create bad art they shouldn't expect people would buy it.

Yes we have celebrities, but how many? Several hundred? There are far more actors than that. Yes we have musicians who rake in the big money, but how many?

I mean that a professional musician who never wins a Grammy should still be able to make a living.

They do. 0o As Wedding singers, holiday in bands, for media, there a lot of working musician that are not recongized then those that are. There is a lot of music out there. The celebrity thing was to point out that we do revere artisans. There tons of animators that make a living in lots of different fields.

Its a demand issue. Not every one can do what they want. Areospace, a high education low workforce industry is a foodstamp steak industry. When you're working you're raking it in, when you're not, you might be out of work for years.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I guess with the artists it's more an issue of being an entreprenuer then. You're working for yourself, you don't have a set wage from an employer.

I imagine life for a self-employed mechanic with no shop would be a lot like the life of a musician with no recording deals.

[Cthulhu]

I ... I already mentioned the point about people needing to make the machines!

Self-improving AI.  The AI designs robots for the various jobs, as well as robots that manufacture robots.  We build the first few robot-manufacturing robots, and they go to work making more robots.  Pretty soon humans are out of the employment loop entirely, reaping the benefits of a unflinchingly loyal workforce that is incapable of having a problem with our exploitation.

It's wishful thinking, but dead Cthulhu dreams.

[JoshuaFH]

Even if that becomes reality through some twist of fate Chtulhu, I'm of the mindset that humanity will never lie content in a veritable paradise. When things become easy, humanity will scale up their endeavors to better fit the age.

Ergo, Moon Base.

[Nilocy]

I really don't think we'll ever get to the stage of 100% automation of the work force. But theres going to be jobs that humans will have to fill, such as taste testing. Annnnnnd... taste testing.

[qwertyuiopas]

I suspect that even once work becomes optional, many people will decide to do at least some work themselves. Any sufficiently abundant automated good would likely be removed from currency, as free stuff, so that the currency remains balanced. Only, since food production and general other things would be automated and free, there wouldn't be a need for a minimum wage.
Housing would likely end up as both expensive quality housing, and still quite nice automatically produced towers of free, though somewhat smallish(large by current standards) apartments(to conserve space for the future, by building upwards rather than a sprawl).
Keeping the automated production going would be for the common good, so control would likely shift to governments.

[Jude]

Yeah that's the thing about building a paradise where robots do everything. It's actually not a paradise because the benefits of the robots aren't shared equally, or even remotely equally.

[Forumsdwarf]

What you should ask yourself is who wins and who loses in a society in which everything that can be automated is.

"People skills", stuff you wouldn't want from a machine, like a massage from your chatty massage therapist, would become more valuable.

"Winner-take-all information skills", like the ability to plan and design, would benefit a few very wealthy "rock stars" in the industry but leave out rank-and-file designers.  I'm thinking franchising: you only need 1 brilliant designer to design a couple dozen McDonaldses then replicate that design a million times thanks to cheap information flow, cheap training materials, etc.

Teachers ... colleges are headed for a crash.  The first automated degree program that consistently and reputably turns out good students and all the Danegeld Higher Education flogs from the masses will stay in peoples' pockets.

People with versatile skills who can take components from the marketplace and assemble them into a workable business plan will prosper.  An entrepreneur can get started for a couple hundred bucks, a beat up car, and a solid business plan for a vast number of things he couldn't before.  Start a news service?  Pocket change.  Design a computer component?  Pocket change.  Innovators never had it so good.  Competition for obvious things, like the aforementioned news service, will be crushing, so innovators will need to find niches, but then that's what they're good at.

Creative arts people, like writers and musicians, aren't going to be replaced by machines any time soon.  But more "ambidextrous-brained" people who would've been designing restaurants will be competing for the abstract market where machines can't replace them, so I'm going to predict more competition will make it tougher.  Plus the barriers to entry are gone -- anyone can record a professional-quality song or make a movie these days for chump change.

Scientists, engineers, and software developers will always be needed.  Engineers may find themselves suffering from the power-relationship or "rock star problem" of the systems-designer types I mentioned earlier.  Time will tell.

Medical ... oh, if only they had AI doctors.  Health care crisis SOLVED, and the medical field would become a scientific endeavor rather than a service industry.  The title "doctor" would mean "scientist" or you wouldn't have a job.  Health care dollars could be spent on research instead of treatment.

And coming full-circle to "people skills", getting a human will become a mark of luxury or wealth.  Robo-doctors for the masses, human doctors for the rich.  But better a robo-doc than no doc at all ...

But I'm no futurist, so I'm sure someone has thought this through better than I have.