[Trizek]

Sure you can definitely live with lower standard (nice story of yours by the way, remember us how recent progress revolutionized our lives). But I mean liberating as much as we can people from the necessity of working, and improving their quality of life in general, is a more realistic fight for humanity than destroying an asteroid.

[ctdonath]

Someone has to do the work; value is not durable nor zero-sum. Destroying an Earth-threatening asteroid is assuring the continued opportunity of all to produce as they can & will; confiscating the fruits of the productive to give to the idle punishes the former and rewards the latter. What you describe as "liberating" is mutual enslavement of producers & idle to each other. What you describe as "realistic" is unsustainable no less than the extinction event of an asteroid impact.

[Trizek]

"Destroying an Earth-threatening asteroid..." But what asteroid ? That's all the point, it's ridiculous to care as much about a non-existing asteroid in the near feature than the plenty of dramatic problems that are causing damages for centuries.

"Someone has to do the work", "confiscating the fruits of the productive to give to the idle punishes the former and rewards the latter". That's absolutely not what liberating work is about, and what you describe is a pretty narrow view of economics that we're taught since childhood. Investigating a bit economy shows it get way more complicated than that, just defining "productive value" is a very deep subject. I don't believe you and I are able to assess if an economic system is sustainable or not (reality shown even the best economists can't), whereas scientist are pretty accurate about the low probability of an asteroid destroying earth in 2016.