tdgeek:

 

Being out of work would need to be considered normal, given that automation and software will manage many many things. But people need an income, as cashflow is the oil of an economy. Say a company today has 100 employees, tomorrow it may have 3, but it still needs to contribute to that same wage pool. There needs to be a restructure of the distribution of wealth. Maybe the 95% unemployment will mean we work 4 weeks a year instead of having 4 weeks a year on holiday. Fewer skills may be needed by workers. Some may opt for a business they can still run. There still would need to be a desire to make money, get rich, allow driven people to create products and ideas for everyone.

 

There could also be the widening of haves and havenots (workers/business people and non workers) creating a two level society.

 

This is the trillion dollar question brilliant minds and economists, the IMF and central banks are trying to figure out. Finding a new way to still have an economy, or more specifically cashflow so that all are still encouraged to participate for the so called greater good (rather than greater greed), but only after they discover trying to fix the current system with the same ideas that broke it in the first place (realising letting go of capitalism would hurt their own control over money) repeated doesn't work.

Except they wont need to figure out how to do this with something like Bitcoin taking over. Until they change the law to ban it because it's not profitable for them in the transition from old thinking and capitalism in to new thinking with limited resources for consumption.

I think we'll eventually shift to a resource based economy, not an infinitely expanding one based on consumption of resources (that aren't infinitely replaceable).

I think the key thing would be de-monitising housing, food, transport, and basic requirement for people to work 5-10 hours a week for this in order to have these things. The basics in life should be worked for, with no money in return to "choose" what to spend it on. It's a given, you need food, housing, transport. health care etc... so doing a few hours in one of those fields should be mandatory for no pay. We don't need 40 hour work weeks, you can provide these with minimal amount of real work for real renewable resources and largely automated.

However, it depends who you vote for. Some political parties don't want a government, they want assets sold off and all privatised or monitised so that someone can still "own" and control those under it and ultimately power over another human beings materialism store (so you can have more and them less). This scares the geebee's out of capitalists the mere thought of it. So they slap a word like socialism or communism on it and give it stigma like it would be a bad thing. Even though in reality a balance of the two is needed, something that's currently on a broken scale and why the big gap between rich and poor.

I see it as a cycle the current economy though, as with everything that repeats, we might start a new economy one day soon because we have to after another depression or trading glitch. Just as money transfers from one to another, backwards and forwards from commodities and paper assets etc... those not learning about these cycles get poorer, those that do, get all the wealth that transfers when those markets swing around... some sell and loose, others buy and win.

But out current system, especially public schooling (private is on the other side of the divide) , is designed to produce good workers for companies. Most of which sell crap that no one really needs but are told this is how success is measured in life. While private schools and rich kids get an education from the other side of the fence that 99% won't learn.

In a new economy, humans can go back to discovering whatever might come along... the same way they did electricity and other great useful things nature provides but no one has the time or money under capitalism to stop and experiment and discover something as ground breaking as that in the past. I don't believe the best cure for cancer will come from a lab that's funded, It'll come from someone with an interest in biology mucking around in the spare time- as with most great inventions of the past.