Remember the premise is to drive down the cost of meeting peoples needs.
If the cost of supporting peoples need is driven towards zero, then the cost of supporting your own needs will likewise gets driven towards zero. At that point, the amount of work you will need to put in to meet your needs will go towards zero, and the number of people that can be supported by a minimal amount of additional works will rapidly increase.
The point being that at some point the incremental amount of work needed to support a large number of people choosing not to work will be so low that it's not worth worrying about it relative to the potential benefits of creating a surplus large enough that it effectively becomes a choice for everyone.
While I'm sure a lot of people will choose leisure, a lot of us won't. We might work less. More likely we'll work on different things. If I had full freedom to choose my projects, I'd still work on something because I work on software because I enjoy it.
Liberating a huge number of people to pursue projects that the financial payoff for is extremely uncertain has the potential to be massively transformative.
There are plenty of ways we could reward those choosing to continue to do the minimal necessary work in a future like that, to ensure sufficient people want to.
> They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.
I happen to agree with this part. The Expanse illustrates this potential case well: People on "basic" have their needs met, but are also locked out of work, and getting into the upper echelons where you can get a job and do better is treated as a privilege allotted via random allocations - unless you have friends in high places... People on basic don't dare rise up, because their life depends on not getting in the crosshairs of government.
This is why a lot of the left are concerned about universal basic income, for example - because it is a potential "bread and circus" for capitalism struggling to deal with future fallout of automation.
But that is different from opposing the idea of a system where automation is advanced enough and democratized enough that basic needs are available to be met everywhere, and nobody has the power to stop you from using the time that gives you however you want, including creating your own position to do better.
If the cost of supporting peoples need is driven towards zero, then the cost of supporting your own needs will likewise gets driven towards zero. At that point, the amount of work you will need to put in to meet your needs will go towards zero, and the number of people that can be supported by a minimal amount of additional works will rapidly increase.
The point being that at some point the incremental amount of work needed to support a large number of people choosing not to work will be so low that it's not worth worrying about it relative to the potential benefits of creating a surplus large enough that it effectively becomes a choice for everyone.
While I'm sure a lot of people will choose leisure, a lot of us won't. We might work less. More likely we'll work on different things. If I had full freedom to choose my projects, I'd still work on something because I work on software because I enjoy it.
Liberating a huge number of people to pursue projects that the financial payoff for is extremely uncertain has the potential to be massively transformative.
There are plenty of ways we could reward those choosing to continue to do the minimal necessary work in a future like that, to ensure sufficient people want to.
> They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.
I happen to agree with this part. The Expanse illustrates this potential case well: People on "basic" have their needs met, but are also locked out of work, and getting into the upper echelons where you can get a job and do better is treated as a privilege allotted via random allocations - unless you have friends in high places... People on basic don't dare rise up, because their life depends on not getting in the crosshairs of government.
This is why a lot of the left are concerned about universal basic income, for example - because it is a potential "bread and circus" for capitalism struggling to deal with future fallout of automation.
But that is different from opposing the idea of a system where automation is advanced enough and democratized enough that basic needs are available to be met everywhere, and nobody has the power to stop you from using the time that gives you however you want, including creating your own position to do better.