[jpadkins]

> If consumers are out of work, who the hell is going to keep the economy going?

There is a whole field of research called post scarcity economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity

tldr; it's not as bad as you think, but the transition is going to be bad (for some of us).

[jacquesm]

> for some of us

I've read that before:

“Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor – at least no one worth speaking of.”

[smcin]

Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, about the custom planet industry

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/437536-many-men-of-course-b...

[danaris]

It can only be "not as bad as you think" if the people currently at the top don't continue to hoard all the gains.

If the current system is maintained—the one where if you don't work, you don't earn money, and thus you can't pay for food, shelter, clothing, etc—then it doesn't matter how abundant our stuff is; most people won't have any access to it.

In order for society to reap the benefits of post-scarcity, we must destroy the idea that the people at the top of the corporate pyramid deserve astronomically more money than the people actually doing the work.

[monkeynotes]

The planet has finite resources, least alone land. And then there is human psychology for hoarding resources.