Comment by BenoitEssiambre

I think this is the only model that makes sense in the end game where robots replace human labor.

Imagine we lived in a world where labor was unimportant because machines did most things better than humans could. These machines would still required time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services.

For most people, "working" in this world would consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "Start" button. Machines would produce some new goods or services.

Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This would be mostly creative work as the technical part would mostly be automated. The machines could be specialized for maximum efficiency and quality.

People wouldn't have to go out to work. Machine owners could watch webcam feeds of their machines working in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and the machines themselves, would be picked up and delivered by self driving delivery robots.

To get some variety, people would trade the production of different machines and they would trade excess spent matter. They would also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines. The machines would sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete.

Now assume total energy production was constrained globally to a more or less fixed rate based on what could reasonably be captured from the sun. People would own shares in energy production capacity.

There could be a level of inequality in this society. This depends on how much governments would allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy, useful space and natural resources.

A good way to prevent too high inequality would be for everyone to be shareholders in global production. Every day, shareholder would receive a dividend, an amount of energy/matter to be spent. They could use it in machines to produce stuff or services, trade it or maybe store it in a battery.

This is better than UBI because it aligns production incentives with consumption incentives and make the system naturally sustainable. If people vote for policies that are inefficient and reduce production, they will simply get a smaller dividend. I'm not making a value judgment either. What people collectively want might not always be a larger dividend. But at least the trade-off will be more explicit and sustainable.