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I don' think automation will have a net-destructive effect on jobs--that is, new jobs will replace old ones. But to go along with the hypothetical, probably a continuation of what we have now: more welfare spending, but also occasional on-time universal remittances like in 2020-2021, but it will not be a UBI.
Likely not because in a consumerist capitalist society elites derive their wealth from the lower classes. Who is clicking those Facebook, Google, or Instagram ads? There will be more business to business activity, bypassing the consumer altogether, such as Facebook selling ad space to NGOs and multinationals, Amazon selling cloud storage to big companies, Microsoft servers, etc.
There will always be some scarcity, such as social status or between the merely rich and ultra-wealthy.
The critical point is when the expected economic value of a typical human goes negative. That's when things start to go screwy, and I worry we're crossing that line soon.
Presently deriving wealth from large numbers of the lower classes is the most common route, but what if you could derive your wealth from large numbers of robots instead? Unless the aggregate poor can sell something to the aggregate not-poor, cash will flow away from the system until the population dies out.
This obviously concludes with Mongolian supremacy, since they have land to build with and fewer mouths to feed. Steppe Nomads at it again
Well, the expected worth of having a child is negative right? Back in the good old days you would breed free labor for the farm, but now in the burbs kids are an enjoyable economic drain. Like a really, really expensive 18-year long movie ticket.
Or are you saying that the average person at least "makes up" for their cost in the growth and value they provide? And that maybe we're crossing that threshold?
Yep, that's what I mean. From the perspective of a country, humans are the economically most efficient way to get most things done. E.g. China can do interesting things with 1.4b, "GDP per capita" is still a meaningful metric.
Now, say we go through an automation foom. You can grow lots of crops and feed lots of people very cheaply -- but what do you get in return? Starving the masses is a bad idea because you want to preserve your labor force -- but your labor force is all robots now, so what does it matter? All else equal, a country with a small population will outcompete a country with a large population.
I don't like this, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
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