[ctdonath]

Rushkoff writes: "What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff."

To wit, the discovered it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. With the lofty assumption the idle will, lacking want, pursue productive meaningful occupation, he fails to observe London-like riots are the more likely outcome.

[shoham]

I think that his argument is flawed, but there's some merit to the idea that what a job means will, should and has shifted.

[bluedanieru]

>he fails to observe London-like riots are the more likely outcome

You're suggesting that the London riots, where income distribution and control of wealth and political process is nearly as skewed as in the US, with all the attendant social ills, where civil rights are an even bigger joke than in America, is the result of social democracy run amok? Do you know what social democracy is?

I don't disagree that many people will not pursue productive work if they're free from want. In fact I suspect most won't. But I fail to see why that makes a difference.

I think the core problem is whether technology will make most people obsolete and, if that happens, what we should do with all the people. What do you do with people who really will not and can not ever contribute back to society what they take from it? We had less of a problem with letting them starve back when there really was work for everyone to do, but that might not be the case for much longer, if indeed it is now.

[GFischer]

"I don't disagree that many people will not pursue productive work if they're free from want. In fact I suspect most won't. But I fail to see why that makes a difference."

The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children.

I've sometimes thought that only people demonstrably able to support their children should be helped to do so.

I'm not extremist enough to suggest outright prohibition, China-style, but some kind of discouragement and maybe social stigma, plus education (would it be "indoctrination"?).

[shoham]

"The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children."

Madness.

[GFischer]

Could you elaborate? We have a welfare system in Uruguay, and it is an observable fact that people on welfare have more children than people not on welfare.

Whether that is caused by welfare, idleness or other factors should be subject to studies, but that's what I'm talking about.

[shoham]

Just saw this now. Poor people, I think have more children, with or without welfare -- it's not because of welfare that they do -- how much welfare in Africa?