angus
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Posts: 17,424
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« on: November 17, 2016, 10:47:59 AM » |
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I like the really advanced economy on Star Trek, where pretty much everyone has the freedom to pursue whatever curiosities. You study astrophysics or the violin or engineering because it's interesting, not because you need it to eat or pay the rent.
We're not going to achieve such an advanced economy by squelching technological advance. There will be some mistakes along the way, human displacement, environmental catastrophe, and the like, but that's how we learn. We're already learning not only how to be industrious by consuming fewer unrenewable resources, but also that environmentally-friendly technologies can save revenue over the long run. We would not have learned such lessons without first running low on energy. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Workers will still depend upon paychecks for a long time, though, so as more tasks are automated or exported to lower-cost labor markets, US workers will need to be educated in other fields--and yes, people can learn, even fifty-year-old assembly-line workers. There are plenty of opportunities for infrastructure improvement in the US, and such tasks need experienced hands, so it's not like there's not work to be done here in the United States.
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