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[Levi]

Nope, the problem is who provides for them. I'd love to spend my life on a couch, but I doubt many people would love to feed me and clothe me and pay my internet bill without getting anything in return.

Robots...

Man, future people got it pretty sweet with robots doing all the boring work.

[Montague]

I think we can probably rule out a labor-free robot economy, unless somebody designs a infinite-cheap-energy-machine to replace all this oil and coal society uses for energy. Otherwise it'll be economically infeasible to obtain any more natural resources from the planet to make crap for people to use, metals and plastics and things.

Really, material scarcity is the main obstacle to endless growth and progress, labor is almost irrelevant, after all, people are a renewable resource. On a long enough time line, there is practically an infinite amount of labor available to process natural resources. So its not really a shortage of labor preventing endless economic growth so much as its a shortage of natural resources to exploit.

Also, I suppose there is the argument that not everyone in society needs to work, there is automation and things can be created in such abundance that it doesn't require everyone to participate in the economy. It boils down to a philosophical idea that people shouldn't just exist as parasites to productive people, draining resources while contributing nothing.

Anyways, I'm not even sure what these Wallstreet occupiers are really protesting about... "Anti-greed" is pretty vague.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think we can probably rule out a labor-free robot economy, unless somebody designs a infinite-cheap-energy-machine to replace all this oil and coal society uses for energy.

*cough*highyieldnuclearfusion*cough*

[SalmonGod]

I think we can probably rule out a labor-free robot economy, unless somebody designs a infinite-cheap-energy-machine to replace all this oil and coal society uses for energy. Otherwise it'll be economically infeasible to obtain any more natural resources from the planet to make crap for people to use, metals and plastics and things.

I think it will be a pretty long time, if ever, before we can build a society where no one has any responsibility, but the amount of labor and resources necessary to sustain the population still gets smaller and smaller with time.  It takes less people and less stuff to make more stuff.  Proportionally, those who control those resources have less and less motivation to share.   So we end up with the ironic situation where society as a whole increases material wealth and poverty at the same time.

It boils down to a philosophical idea that people shouldn't just exist as parasites to productive people, draining resources while contributing nothing.

And a large part of it is stubborn clinging to this idea, which is abused by the elite to exploit the productive and forsake everyone else, including those who wish to be productive but are denied the opportunity.

And instead of underlining the absurdity of the situation, we clamor and beg for those elites to make up stuff for us to do in order to justify our existence.

Edit:

Man, I feel for you and I can understand your position. Things shouldn't have to be like that and people should work to change it.

Btw, Jackrabbit, I appreciate your sentiments.

[Montague]

Right.

When you think about it, most employment everywhere is makework already. The primary and secondary sectors need less and less people to produce more and more and this labor surplus led to the creation of the modern teiriary sector. Crap like call-centers,fast food, wal-mart greeters is basically pointless makework that is a symptom of having lots of extra people and very little for them to do. In less developed nations without much of a service sector, you have extended families where only a handful of members work to provide for a family that does nothing but domestic chores or tending to goats and similar make-work and this is perfectly normal and acceptible there.

The problem with right-wing thinking is they believe a massively growing world economy can provide meaningful work to anybody who wants it and effectively end poverty, but the problem is that such an economy would implode when resources become sufficiently scarce. Really, any and all models of modern economies run into the problem of resource scarcity, down the timeline eventiually.

So, really, industrialized society has this problem with having an excess of people, a shortage of work and a finite amount of energy and resources to sustain it. It seems doomed to collapse unless science figures out said infinite-energy-machine so industries have so much cheap energy available they can turn red sand into white sand, to extract every stray iron atoms out of it to meet ever-increasing demand for steel for an industrialized economy.

The world population along with the economy of resource consumption will just have to shrink dramatically and there is a real lack of moral, political or philosophical willpower to allow/make that to happen, or industrialized society as we know it will simply be impossible to continue.

[Africa]

I don't get why it's wrong to think that the economy can keep growing forever, when the alternative is for it to not keep growing and stagnate. Having less people doing less specialized things and producing less means less of the things that make life what it is today - modern medicine, communication that means one average joe in America today has access to more knowledge than the most distinguished scholar in all of human history up to 1970, lower mortality rates, lower rates of hunger, less violence, and all the other things that come from greater prosperity. This is a conversation only people in the first world would have.

Consuming less of the world's resources is one thing, but tying it to the economy shrinking and regressing is insane. The more advanced technology gets, the more we are able to do with less resources, and as the world population levels off around ten billion or whatever thanks to people having less kids as they become more wealthy, the amount of resources we need to use will presumably continue shrinking as we figure out new sources of energy, etc.

Anyway, people not having enough work is a hell of a nice problem to have compared to the alternative that massive economic shrinkage would provide, which is people not having enough food and dying much earlier and more often.

[sluissa]

I think we can probably rule out a labor-free robot economy, unless somebody designs a infinite-cheap-energy-machine to replace all this oil and coal society uses for energy.

*cough*highyieldnuclearfusion*cough*

*Looks out the window.* You know.... we've got one of those already. *Points at the sun.* Why not use it?

[Bauglir]

Because it's not high-yield at this distance with the technology we have available to harness it. At least on the scale necessary for providing energy for a roboconomy. Of course, once we get around to constructing partial Dyson spheres with material we will presumably conjure from the aether...

[SalmonGod]

Anyway, people not having enough work is a hell of a nice problem to have compared to the alternative that massive economic shrinkage would provide, which is people not having enough food and dying much earlier and more often.

Except for our main complaint being that our society makes not having enough work exactly equivalent to not having enough food and dying.  Sure, there are some social programs, but those are notoriously finicky and currently either overwhelmed or politically under attack or both.

And I think the world population could stand to drop quite a bit without giving up any of the benefits of modernity.  Unemployment figures support this.  I'm not suggesting that we accomplish this by letting people die, in fact that mentality is part of what I'm actively opposing.  I just think people should be more aware of the issue and do more to control the number of kids they have, so that population can begin to drop gracefully over time.  I think it's selfish in today's world for a person to have any more than two kids, and I do tell that to people's faces, even in real life.

[DJ]

That doesn't make for a very healthy age structure of society.

[Africa]

Except for our main complaint being that our society makes not having enough work exactly equivalent to not having enough food and dying. 

No it doesn't. You can't live off charity or steal enough to live on in a society where there isn't any surplus.

And I think the world population could stand to drop quite a bit without giving up any of the benefits of modernity.  Unemployment figures support this.  I'm not suggesting that we accomplish this by letting people die, in fact that mentality is part of what I'm actively opposing.  I just think people should be more aware of the issue and do more to control the number of kids they have, so that population can begin to drop gracefully over time.  I think it's selfish in today's world for a person to have any more than two kids, and I do tell that to people's faces, even in real life.

I'd like to see people having less kids too, but what are you gonna do, forcibly sterilize everybody? Our best bet is to bank on the fact that, since number of children seems to decline as wealth increases and the world is slowly but surely getting wealthier for everyone, we'll eventually get to the point where people aren't having an unsustainable amount of kids.

[SalmonGod]

Except for our main complaint being that our society makes not having enough work exactly equivalent to not having enough food and dying. 

No it doesn't. You can't live off charity or steal enough to live on in a society where there isn't any surplus.

Way to edit out the second part of that quote, which directly related to your response? 

Plus, this is a very common notion, but it's only true for a healthy individual... not for anyone with an even mildly significant health problem or dependents.  I could easily live on the street out of dumpsters, and I would in fact be happily doing something closer to that if I only had to worry about myself.  However, I have responsibilities, so this is a completely useless idea.

I'd like to see people having less kids too, but what are you gonna do, forcibly sterilize everybody? Our best bet is to bank on the fact that, since number of children seems to decline as wealth increases and the world is slowly but surely getting wealthier for everyone, we'll eventually get to the point where people aren't having an unsustainable amount of kids.

I'm not making any prescriptions here, besides everyone doing their part to raise cultural awareness.  I just wanted to respond to the idea that modern society wouldn't be possible without our excessive population.

[Vector]

Generally, birth rates drop off substantially as women gain equal power, education, and, oh, reproductive control of any sort.  I'm not even talking about abortion--just condoms do a lot.

[SalmonGod]

Good point.

[alway]

Global population is actually expected to peak around mid to late 21st century at somewhere around 10 billion, give or take a couple billion.