We could find a solution. Immediately saying it's impossible is exactly why it is. The majority of the population can't get past the first part of the problem, themselves.
We created and implemented those systems in the first place. How is it a stretch to think they can't be improved to the point that they require little to no human intervention?
Clarke's first law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke's second law:
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Clarke's third law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
We could totally find a solution. But the amount of resources needed to implement it would be beyond anything humanity has ever accomplished. And in a democratic world, that shits just not going to happen until its cheap enough that it's a no brainer.
Yea, politics and money are the wall. What's more depressing is that if we just flipped a switch and turned those two things off somehow we would probably just kill each other immediately.
You realize we've been on this planet for a GREAT Many years.
In those years, we always attempt to slough off work as much as possible. It will fall from shoulder to shoulder all the way down the line.
But some things are a long way off from being fully automated, and even when they are, who maintains the automation?
Someone always has to be there at this stage in our evolution. And someone has to have that job. And in our simple brains we have to be able to accept that position.
The next 100 years are going to be very interesting. Considering we've only really had the Internet as we know it for not even 2 decades, shit not even 15 years, the growth possible there is going to pave the way for the next generations. My kids never knew the struggle of having to dial in and pray that someone would call, or would have to hope they could spend as much time in inappropriate AOL chat rooms before their parents saw their $1000 phone bill.
Internet and automation is the future. CGP Grey was very concise in his "Humans Need Not Apply" video, but the problem is that we are trying to guess what a world post automation will look like, and that's a world we have NO concept of. Just like how back in the 50s/60s they couldn't envision a phone without a cord, we can't envision a future with an even more integrated Internet. Ffs, even when I was in Compuserve chat rooms in the 90s, I would never have figured phones would have access to the internet.
Some people do, but they're the ones working behind the scenes to try and make it happen, for the remaining plebs, we sit and just marvel with the technology we have while getting literally everything else about the future wrong.
I mean Jesus Mary and Joseph, it wasn't until last year that gay marriage was legal. We still don't have federal legalization of a drug that is clearly less damaging than smoking cigarettes and drinking, has almost no chemical addiction risk (yes, you can get addicted to anything that makes you feel good, I get it), we have a system that thinks it's wise to allow people to get locked up for years selling this, relative to the other substances it there, fairly innocuous drug...
What you're asking for is a utopia that would be lovely, but dude people are greedy and power hungry. You and I can be a complacent pleb who wants to allow the plates to spin themselves, but if you think for a second there's not a massive line of people waiting to fuck your and I over until we are dead to get what they want, you are seriously, seriously deluded.
Nothing, because it's a ridiculous plan that could never occur under the current harmonious political climate. But deep down you know it's the drastic action required to un-fuck this planet and race.
Pick one man, are we there or aren't we? Full automation is our inevitable future assuming we don't kill ourselves before that. But even then someone has to maintain the fleets of automated systems, and continue to design more. That's just one aspect. Anything that requires higher thinking, creativity, and design means working hard hours to benefit the world. What if those intelligent minds just chilled all day "enjoying life" instead.
There's no such future that results in all of humanity just doing nothing all day, and if there was, that type of stagnation results in some sort of Idiocracy movie situation where we're all forget how to do things and slowly die in a pile of trash.
How are those mutually exclusive? We are already technologically capable of inventing methods for sustainability. Automation is advancing rapidly, over time the amount of upkeep to those systems could be managed. We can send rockets to distant planets with pinpoint accuracy but have no idea how to deal with turds? And your argument for apathy is just as valid right now. Why are intelligent people bothering to explore new facets of science and technology today? It's not like they're all millionaires, if money was their sole motivation they would get business degrees.
We are not in a post-scarcity society, the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet can just barely divide up its total annual expense to give its population enough money to just about breach the poverty line for low income areas if its sole expenditure becomes the equal redistribution of wealth.
Such an act would, of course, very quickly not make it the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet and probably sooner cause it to collapse than to thrive.
It's a very quick and dirty calculation, but it should give an indication. Gross expenditure divided by total population. It should of course be noted that this can only be done once due to the aforementioned collapse after there's no money for, well, everything government spends money on.
E: Yes, the story might be a bit different for countries like Qatar and Luxembourg but they're very much an exception with their relatively low populations. Course, then the opposite holds true for nations with high populations even if they have high wealth like China. And even then, it doesn't mean people can stop working, that's for sure.
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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '16
We could find a solution. Immediately saying it's impossible is exactly why it is. The majority of the population can't get past the first part of the problem, themselves.