taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (07/01/86)
-------- This article is from pyramid!utzoo!henry and was received on Wed Jun 18 17:07:42 1986 -------- > ...will we as a society be able to increase the numbers of > these types of jobs to prevent a replay of the early decades of the > industrial revolution? Or will we move toward elitism, where only the > owners of the means of production and the ones who know how to build the > machines will be able to have a decent life? More significant, although longer-term... At present, the labor of the average worker suffices to support a decent life for, say, a small family. Note that this is already a considerable improvement on the past. What happens when productivity improves to the point that only a small fraction of the population *needs* to work? Ignoring individual differences for the moment, how do we cope with a world of plenty? What replaces the paycheck as a halfway-equitable way of distributing wealth? For that matter, what fraction of current humanity could cope with a lifetime of leisure if they were suddenly presented with it? Somebody (Arthur C. Clarke?) once defined a civilized man as one who could be happily and productively occupied for the rest of his life if he was completely freed from all need to earn a living. What fraction of the current population of the Western nations, never mind the Third World, is "civilized" by this definition? Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry