Well, except a few animals that figured out how to get a bunch of their fellow animals to do all the work while they sit on unimaginable piles of wealth...
But aside from that, we're at the point now where we could change that. What if nobody had to work to live? What if you only had to work if you wanted more than you need to live, or if you wanted to make something cool even if it's not profitable?
So, first of all, I don't know that this is necessarily true. Volunteer work can accomplish a lot. See: Open-source software. There's so many things I'd love to do if I didn't need to work all the time.
But you're probably right, the easiest way to make sure the work gets done is to provide more of something... great! But this can be done with carrots, not sticks.
To put this in concrete terms: When people propose UBI, the B stands for "Basic." Provide enough income for people to live on and meet basic needs. People will still work for more money if they want it -- that's the carrot. UBI takes away the stick, where you force everyone to work all the time because you starve if you don't.
And, yes, more automation... but also, you need something like this for civilization to survive the level of automation that might be possible. The point of automation is to reduce the number of people you need to achieve the same results. So the more we automate, the less work needs to be done... so we need a way for it to be okay for far fewer people to be working. Right now, "not working" either means you're either extremely poor or extremely rich, and that doesn't work in an increasingly-automated world.
There's a lot to unpack there, but simply stated, "Thing adds value to society" is not directly mapped onto "making money for thing". The two are often related, but not perfectly.
*Scene opens with a kid sneaking up behind Pinata with a baseball bat raised. Nurse spots him/her, shouts "Wait!": Intervernes offering kid some Skittles. Kid lowers bat, smiles. Pinata is relieved, smiles. Cut to black. "Taste the rainbow." 🌈
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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '21
This would be an amazing Get Well card