[tnorgaard]

Good questions you raise, nhaehnle.

First of, I don't try to pretend to be a scholar in economics, so please bare with me.

That a capital system contains people/entities that accumulate wealth is exactly why I finished off with the Thomas Piketty comment. His very interesting book, Capital in the 21st Century, argues that our current system favours capital owners and we should tax capital, not income.

About labour being displaced, I can recommend Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, however it does not contain silver bullets. :-)

I can only theorize on what Stephen Hawkings meant with his answer, but to me it didn't look like a general critic of capital, but more the system we have now.