[esafak]

> we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money

What's your proposal if not traditional work? The realistic outcome I see is shifting labor to unautomatable sectors like hospitality. That will keep people employed, but unhappy as they increasingly find themselves unable to find jobs they enjoy, or at comparable levels of income.

edit: I realize many people are unhappy with their jobs now, but by dint of labor, they can improve their lot. I am lamenting the closing of this window.

[harimau777]

A couple of options off the top of my head: art, research, athletics, the humanities

[jjkaczor]

AI is already coming for "art" and "research" - by "slop metrics" it's already there for "art".

[sph]

It's coming for the type of industrialised, commoditized art.

Then there's art where human touch is the crucial ingredients. The problem is that it doesn't sell as well, but that has never stopped any starving artist from creating.

[mnbpdx]

If a computer being better than people at a thing made it not satisfying to do, then no one would enjoy doing anything AI/computers are already better than us at doing.

IOW why do people still love playing chess

I love playing the piano, but my skill is pretty low. If AI becomes better than me at piano, that's just one other person among millions who are better than me at piano; I couldn't care less.

meaning/satisfaction != advancing the absolute edges of human ability

if you have to be the best to be happy you're missing the point

[pessimizer]

The vast majority of people do not work jobs that they enjoy, that is a middle-class indulgence and ideal that they don't even live up to; almost all their literature is about why they should be enjoying things that they don't or how to discover the things that they might enjoy, and they stuff themselves with drugs to make themselves pay attention and not want to die.

And that's the top 15% of the population. The rest are not romanticizing digging ditches, scraping the dead skin off people's feet, or putting catheters up senior citizens.

Your "realistic" scenario is how 95% of the world lives already.

Getting meaning, community, culture, and "growth" from your job is middle-class religion, and they're constantly having crises of faith. The default state is to find these things in something other than serving people in order to eat.

[petsfed]

Or maybe the problem is that exchanging labor for scarce necessities only makes sense when labor itself is scarce.

[esafak]

We all see the incipient decoupling of labor from capital, while still having bills to pay. We are at the stage where we need to trial solutions, like a Pigouvian tax.

[wiseowise]

Milking unicorns.