04-30-2020, 01:00 PM
(04-30-2020, 10:25 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-29-2020, 04:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Labor unions will be back, and people who do real work will get real pay again. I expect revitalization of the Heartland of America as a means of deconcentration of the population -- which will revive the Rust Belt (even if with an economic basis very different from that of the 1950's). Life will be more conformist, but part of conformity will be a reduction of the disparity between sybaritic excess and gross deprivation that seems to be the recent (and soon moribund) way.
I suspect that the solution to this ongoing problem will be different this time. Some otherwise well compensated work will be automated away, and some reduced by greater reliance on machines. It's hard to unionize that. Some alternative that pipelines money to people so they can be recycled it in the economy will be needed. What it will be is a mystery, but going back seems unlikely.
The people who operate and maintain the robots will be the people to organize. See also creative people as employees.
Typically it has been the cheap labor with repetitive tasks that has been most automated out of existence.
...I expect that most people will work fewer hours, with people working second jobs only for such short-term objectives as getting a down-payment on a household mortgage. There will be less work to spread around, as people will not be needing more stuff.
Down payments on housing? Sure. I expect the American economy to be more dispersed. California is taking on Third World conditions. I have my prediction on what housing will be like -- huge apartments with many apartments having no real windows; people will rely on video screens that give them whatever view they want. You could be in Lubbock, Texas and have an excellent view of Lake Como. Or the Andromeda Galaxy close up. Or... You will also have video available that offers a road trip. Thus the Big Sur or Camden, New Jersey (the latter if you are a masochist) if you so desire. No gas costs, no motel bills, no traffic jams (unless you really want to travel "the 405" in Greater Los Angeles), you can have ersatz travel even if drunk... or you could watch a sporting event as if you were in the audience. That may be the only way in which people get to see a World Series game in Yankee Stadium.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.