[quote=no_such_reality]Yes, the human race is at crux point. We’ve seen forerunners of it before but not to the extent we’re seeing now.
The primary issue is as CDMA points out, we can have wealth without labor. And more importantly, provide the necessities without labor but not without capital.
The best example of it is that farm. In the 1800s, a single very large (think 13 kids type), would have 40 acres and bust their but farming it in cotton, wheat, corn, etc.
Today, a single smaller family can have 25000 acres, and with couple trucks and harvesters, do it all themselves and due to fertilizer, science and crop improvements, generate 2-10X/acre more.
The combine can cut and thresh an acre of wheat in under 6 minutes, by hand farmers could only cut 2 acres a day. And in the 1800s when the first rudimentary cutter/combines came out it was a dramatic improvement to 8 acres a day.
With a couple combines and trucks, 4 people can do 300 acres a day of wheat harvest.
That same change is happening across all industries and now moving into services. Computers read your medical scans, automated service systems process your payments, change your accounts and even change your services.
In the past, there was always work to do an hard physical labor was exceedingly valuable. It took the vast majority of physical labor to just feed ourselves. That’s changed.
Unlike the past in which the workers provide all the labor and were necessary, today, workers are quickly becoming unnecessary.[/quote]
BTW this is an excellent extension of my arguement and something that MISH states repeatedly…
