Quote:
Originally Posted by p911dad
Along this line, Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, is about this future of no jobs because of automation. He wrote it back in 1952. As I recall (without re-reading it all these years later - I am sure someone here will correct me - only the engineers still had jobs. And now here we are, it's happening, especially for all those folks without the benefit of saleable skills.
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Asimov has a short story about a future where the robots do all the work and the poor people HAD to live in giant mansions and their only "job" was to consume as much as possible to keep the robot workers busy. The really wealthy could live modestly because they would hire servants to use up the goods and consume.
The biggest problem with population of much more than what we have now is of course energy. Even if we can make some giant strides and bring nuclear fusion into cheap production and put one in every city, the problem with energy production is heat. We will need the magical fusion reactors located in space and magically beam the energy to earth. Maybe dilithium crystals and antimatter!