Bertrand Russell once said that all work falls into one of two basic categories: moving objects on or near the surface of the Earth, and telling other people to do so.
> First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics.
Bertrand Russel was a deep thinker who often drew from a deep well of thought and understanding. When he wrote about politics, he seems to have covered the well and sucked his thoughts from a puddle.
But still, more and more it's not people who move objects, but robots and machines.
Today, are developed agricultural robots to plant and collect vegetables automatically. One agroengineer will watch out for thousands of robots growing and collecting food by watching and telling his computers.
Google's developping robot cars. But what will be the killer application, is the robot truck! Already, in mines the use robot trucks (because human drivers are too hard to find to work in those remote places, and to drunk to drive them big trunks without straying away the tracks).
Kiva System's developing warehouse robots that store goods and prepare shipments without human intervention.
Amazon of course has developped the computer programs to let us tell the warehouse robots what we want.
Soon we'll celebrate the first google truck taking the first tomatoes and potatoes grown by robot tractors, and bringing them to a robotic warehouse, where Amazon will send food orders that will be prepared by Kiva's robots and distributed to your house by Google trucks and cars.
From the ground to your plate with zero human intervention.
Well some human investment. And maintainance, until we develop the maintaining robots. Machines making machines! Oh my!
The only reason why it doesn't go faster, is that companies have a hard time finding out how they'll make any money, trying to bring food and stuff to people who don't have to work for it, and therefore who don't have money for it. Google and Amazon are cheating the other companies, selling them advertisement space, while developping the systems that will make those other companies (their real customers) as obsolete as human workers (already, half the US jobs can be computerized. Federal government shut down? My eye! Just send half the country home, we don't need you to do anything more! Well, not yet, we still have to set up a global robotized agricultural, industrial and distribution system to feed you. But soon. In any case, it's not a question of money anymore.
Just a clarification: what you're saying is that most jobs aren't essential and can be computerized. That doesn't mean they're not worth something, or that people will be able to stay at home and just live in idleness.
What happens is that most jobs switch from agriculture & industry to the infamous "services"... most of us will be/are selling nonessential services (entertainment, leisure, nonessential medical services & care, advertising, etc..). Most of government is probably in the "nonessential" category.
Some % of the workforce will still work on R&D and essential services of course.
Having all the basics covered by a small percentage of the workforce doesn't mean the rest will have to work less.. on the contrary, the battle to divest people from their money will be fiercer than ever - more and better and more exotic services, more advertising, etc. It would be interesting to live in a post-scarcity society, but we're nowhere near there yet (and I'll be a bit Malthusian and say that we should curb the population growth a bit if we want to have what I consider to be a good standard of living in the future)
