All of which sounds excellent, until it smashes your head in with a brick.

It never occurs to them, it seems, that if they aren't making provisions for "blockies" and all the other workers made redundant, there'll be fewer and fewer people who'll be there to buy whatever the machines produce.

@SPK
That issue is brought up a to when it comes to automation. In the past people managed to invent new jobs to replace the superseded ones.
AN example of a superceded job (an extreme one) : the previously very common task of 'human drudge' A person whos job it is to push a wheel in order to power some machine is not so common anymore, having been replaced by windmills, watermills and then steam engines.
These kind of jobs were replaced by 'coal miner' or 'loom operator'
Nowadays 'coal miner' jobs are being replaced by 'software engineer'. The jobs tend to get less hard laboury and more like something youd do for a hobby.
One thing that is becoming more apparent these days however, is that people dont *need* jobs. Its not like the gods of economics will dissaprove and smite us. If our food production, shelter, power and various other needs can be taken care of by machines then why not? Humans get to do what they want.
I've brought it up here before but some countries are realising this idea by seriously considering introducing a universal wage for all citizens that will take care of their basic needs.

Of course, knowing humans penchant for unscrupulousness, things could go very badly, maybe youd have a tiny elite plutocracy controlling all the robots which also defend them from the disenfranchised masses. Though I cant see that being a stable arrangement for very long.

Anyway, basically economics is (to a very large extent) not at all scientific or concerned with reality. Please dont pay economic conventions much heed. If its possible to have robots grow our food and take care of our biz then lets do it!

typo: brought up *a lot*

"The jobs tend to get less hard laboury and more like something you'd do for a hobby."

I don't know anyone who'd consider waiting tables or working an autodialer all day a "hobby", but service jobs are rapidly becoming the only readily available kind of work left in the first world (and they're perennially the lowest paid, what a coincidence!). If it really becomes all there is, then yeah, we'd need a universal salary just to cover what the tip jar can't. Don't get me wrong; the idea of a universal wage is great and feels like a step towards a post-scarcity society, except, well, we're still nowhere near that on the energy side of things.

I'm in favor of automation, too, but we should do it from the top down. Kill all executives, replace them with cost/risk/profit-analysis engines, and let those chart the course of humanity every fiscal quarter. Odds are it would be better for all of us and the world we live on, even if Skynet decides we're good for nothing but skull-gravel under its treads.

It was running the Task of Amontillado.

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROCESSOR!"