Unfortunately, existing societies developed and still live with some attitudes which previously had value but have outlived much of their usefulness. Among these is, "If you don't work, you don't eat."
Machines have absorbed not only the jobs of the unskilled manual laborers like ditch diggers and farmers. They have taken those of the skilled such as machinists, production engineers, clerks, typists and secretaries. Long before singularity, I expect creative and intellectual tasks to be taken as well.
This leaves few options for individuals other than starvation. One is bureaucracy where an unlimited number of make-work paper pushing jobs can be created in government or finance. Another option is to become one of the very few masters of the system. The one percenters who climb to the top of the pile of their fellow humans by becoming masters of the system. The owners of Starbucks rather than the rest of us who just work there.
We could get lucky and experience a substantial loss of technological civilization via climate change or ecological collapse. Then we'd be back to total employment grubbing out enough food to avoid starving before spring.
[/sarcasm]
I am retired from an engineering career in automation taking away those jobs and giving them to machines. No need to offshore them. The machines work cheaper than the Chinese. Don't be too mad at me. I needed the work.
Machines have absorbed not only the jobs of the unskilled manual laborers like ditch diggers and farmers. They have taken those of the skilled such as machinists, production engineers, clerks, typists and secretaries. Long before singularity, I expect creative and intellectual tasks to be taken as well.
This leaves few options for individuals other than starvation. One is bureaucracy where an unlimited number of make-work paper pushing jobs can be created in government or finance. Another option is to become one of the very few masters of the system. The one percenters who climb to the top of the pile of their fellow humans by becoming masters of the system. The owners of Starbucks rather than the rest of us who just work there.
We could get lucky and experience a substantial loss of technological civilization via climate change or ecological collapse. Then we'd be back to total employment grubbing out enough food to avoid starving before spring.
[/sarcasm]
I am retired from an engineering career in automation taking away those jobs and giving them to machines. No need to offshore them. The machines work cheaper than the Chinese. Don't be too mad at me. I needed the work.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
