But need they starve? I mean, I think we’re essentially talking about a post-scarcity economy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy). Imagine a society where there are, say, a thousand people who own/control more or less everything. They may have ten thousand hangers on (family and friends who sponge off them in one form or another, all of them essentially enjoying the good life) and maybe employ an additional hundred thousand people who all enjoy a high standard of living. Then there are the billions of “unwashed masses”, as it were, for whom there is no productive role aside selling to one another whatever is unique about themselves, something that a robot couldn’t adequately replace.As for their standard of living, I’d guess that it would probably better than ours. They would have ample living space, although it might be deep underground or perhaps in a towering skyrise. Little would be required from them. Basically, they’d be expected to obey the laws and not cause a disruption. In return, they’d have a place to live, food to eat, recreations to enjoy, and learning material to study if they should decide to apply for one of few meaningful employment positions still available.My tendency is to assume that in order to achieve some semblance of stability, the top tier of such a society would allow social mobility between different layers of whatever social hierarchy they set up beneath them. In this way, the best and the brightest could be incentivized to buy into the system, becoming a part of its machinery, regardless of the fact that they would know that the only possible way to enter into the top tier would be to marry into it or be lucky enough to be born into it. I think that for most people, the vast majority, in fact, this would, for a time, be an acceptable arrangement, despite that one important element of unfairness. So long as the masses weren’t literally starving, I don’t know that they’d necessarily want to rebel.Nonetheless, I still think that such an arrangement couldn’t go on like this forever, at least not with a free press. Granted, even assuming a technically free press, we have to assume that the top tier has the power to control most of the media, and that when a particular person, presumably a member of the 99.99% gets too popular though social agitation, they could reach out to either bribe the agitator through direct employment (and thus elevation to the very tiny employed-class) or dispense with them though other means (which I’ll leave to your imagination).However, even given all this, it seems to me that it’s inevitable that a social movement could rise up among the masses calling for a more equitable distribution of the wealth. (“Yes, you take good care of us, which is awfully nice, but your employees have a much better life than us, and we don’t think it’s fair. And you have a much, much better life than us, and we don’t think that’s fair. In fact, we think the whole system is dogshit, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”) I think that would happen at some point. I don’t know if it would take years, decades, or centuries, but I think it’s more or less inevitable. No matter how well the masses are living, people always want more than they have, and even if there is some degree of social mobility incentivizing “good behavior”, nonetheless, people feel very strongly about basic fairness. We have an innate sense of what’s fair to us and what’s not, and, well, envy is one of the seven deadlies for a reason.So, yes, I think you could very easily end up with some sort of revolution, but the moment it turned violent, I think it would likely being terribly one-sided, and I don’t mean in favor of the 99.99%. With automation would likely come mass surveillance and robot armies. So I think the 99.99% would be well-incentivized to keep things people. However, the chances of a revolutionary movement successfully pushing the status quo really depends on freedom of the press, the willingness versus reticence of a ruling class to use force to maintain its position, and the degree to which members of the employed-class buy into the agitator’s arguments. If, at the end of the day, the masses can vote in real change, then the revolution doesn’t have to be violent, and the transition towards greater “fairness” (by which I mean fairness from the perception of the 99.99%) can ensue without a replay of 1789 or 1917. But if you don’t have democracy, and so the masses cannot vote themselves a better deal, then at some point they will fight for it, but like I said, this conflict is likely to be very one-sided, and with each flashpoint, surveillance and security will clamp down even further.I suppose that capitalist democracy, if left alone and not pestered by outside threats, seems likely to morph into a sort of socialistic eutopia where people live pretty well and can say pretty much whatever they want, but where government has taxed the rich to such a degree that, although they enjoy a higher standard of living than everyone else, their standard of living is not unconscionably higher. Having said that, the state bureaucracy will be a corrupt, bloated, inefficient mess run by idiots and sycophants, and the population at large will mostly be fat, dumb, and happy, but it won’t matter, because so long as automation can continue to support a post-scarcity economy, as so long as people are getting as good a deal as everybody else, there will be no need for further revolution. It will be, I think, as close to a utopia as we are capable of creating.But in a capitalistic authoritarian state, I think there would be continual agitation, and the surveillance/security state would clamp down to the point that everyone’s communication is monitored all the time, and anyone who steps out of line is quickly dealt with, so that the simmering discontent doesn’t begin boiling.These two different societies, I think, would pretty clearly be at odds. However, my tendency is to give advantage to the latter rather than the former, for although one would think that the 99.99% of society #2 would want to reform their society to become like society #1, they would be so controlled by their elite that they could be made to do things that would ultimately assist in society #2 overpowering society #1 in whatever contest they are engaged, whether it be economic or open warfare. Of course, if the elite of society #2 were to spontaneously decide that even they like society #1 better than their own society, then I suppose society #2 could flip, but this might be a bit hard to pull off. However, it’s not like this sort of thing has never happened. It’s just extremely rare. I’m reminded of the democratization of Taiwan (my wife is Taiwanese, so I’ve gotten the basic gist of the story from her, but the upshot is that Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Kai-shek, was a pretty good guy).In any case, because this seems to be so rare, I’m inclined to think that such a society will not flip so easily, and will long exist as a strange sort of dystopia where people have everything they need, where they don’t have to work, where they enjoy a very nice life, all things considered, except for the fact that they need to eschew political and social commentary. That would be verboten. It would be very sad, in my opinion, and I’m sure artists would try to find ways to disseminate political and social messages within their art, but there would be censors to prevent their art from receiving an audience. And the most obstinate among them would likely be made to disappear.Nonetheless, over the due course of time, the elite would make mistakes, and many of their own employees would become secretly sympathetic to the 99.99%, and as for their friends and family, many would have lived among the people of society #1, and their freedoms of speech would stand in start contrast the controls placed upon the masses of society #2, so ultimate, I think, there would be a violent revolution, and if history goes as it has gone before, then you’d end up with some politician or general in charge, and this person or one of his henchmen would become the absolute dictator of this society. You could end up with a sort of North Korea, except the people are all well fed. But you could end up with that, and eventually society #1 and society #2 would go to war, and because I can easily view the population of society #1 becoming far too fat, dumb, and happy, I would give the ultimate advantage to society #2.Am I wrong is this reasoning?----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=cApOz9iiqi898Eb3etQR6zXwBhUETGnX