As long as human want is never satisfied, there will always be a job to do. And if that isn't right, in however many decades you are worried about, consider how much you complain while enjoying leisure, how you wish you were working - you probably don't. The point of using machines is to Decrease our labor and Increase production, making less work for ourselves. The more productive we can be while doing less work, our standard of living increases. We are made better off by increases in production, which makes goods better and cheaper, and not by work itself. So if we run out of work to do, we can all rejoice, stay home on steemit, or do other activities we find more valuable. But that won't happen.
People have been worried about this for generations but turn out to be wrong every time. Here is likely your response, already said by someone else:
"That may have been very well in the past, but today conditions are fundamentally different, and now we simply cannot afford any more labor-saving machines." - Eleanor Roosevelt 1945
Don't be this wrong. Embrace the freedom of movement and choice that are afforded to us by using machines in production.
I do think there will still be jobs around, but I don't think there will be enough. While in the past more jobs were created by automation there will come a time when most humans will be rendered obsolete in the work place. That is the logical progression. Human labour being minimised as much as possible to increase productivity and profits.
If there is no work for someone to do, how will they have enough money to survive? How will they afford the basics of living without income? This then leads to your point about leisure.
Too much leisure isn't a good thing. People need to work. It isn't always the end product that produces joy, it's the process of making/doing that does. Playing video games all day with no life goals isn't fun in the longterm. That's kind of what I do now, I have far too much free time and it isn't actually fun.
And If you can't work how can you have leisure time? You need money to provide the basics, if you don't have the basics sorted you can't really have leisure.
I also don't like the idea of having most of the control over machines in the hands of the rich. If the rich own the means of production over all goods, what power do we have? They control everything. The disparity between rich and poor will be immense.
Yes people were wrong beforehand, they didn't foresee new jobs being created. Maybe there will always be enough work, maybe it isn't going to be an issue for the next 100 years, but I still think it's worth exploring the possible negative outcomes instead of assuming everything is going to be perfect. We will just have to wait and see.
While you have plenty of leisure you are still better off because you can choose whether to work or not.
Let's just be honest. The "rich" entrepreneurs are the ones capable of arranging labor and capital goods in a way that results in products you demand. And they are rewarded for doing so with profit. If you remove their ability to do so, prices of consumer goods will skyrocket or run out and you will certainly have plenty of work to do, such as grow your own food. It is these people you are jealous of but you fail to realize you do not complain about the good products at low prices they produce. You for instance with the xbox have had hours and hours of entertainment from a piece of technology smaller than a toaster. The transaction is not zero sum, you both leave happy.
You'd rather we All be poor? No thanks. If you want to own a machine of your own, make one.
I get that automation will make things cheaper, but this doesn't address what the people with no jobs are going to do.
The only thing I'm worried about is there not being enough jobs and people starving.
If robots can one day make everything for free, then we will all be happy and fat, and who cares. I don't get how cheaper things is a bad thing? The only time there is people starving is when governments prevent markets from working. Trust me, no businessman will employ a machine to do a process that does not produce income, that is, profit from consumer demand. Entrepreneurs can only profit when they bring things to market that consumers are willing to spend their money on, and that are cost effective. If consumers do "run out of money" the machines will be scrapped in favor of cheaper production methods, that allow for the most effective use of capital. Markets adjust in this way all the time. When consumers search for the lowest prices, the market delivers. We just have no way of knowing what new products and processes that will be created in the future and just how much better off we will be. To think that this point in time is the pinnacle of civilization is to make the same mistake of thousands that came before us, who did not have near the standard of living we take for granted. As long as people are free to live and work as they please, society benefits.
If you don’t trust the rich? Why do you agree with them on UBI? (Musk, Zuckerberg)
I don't really trust them either, but it's better than starving.