Comment by aabajian
8 hours ago
The answer to this is: countries with the most natural resources will build robots to farm all their food, mine all their minerals, and build all their products. It will be up to governments to enforce that outputs are equitably distributed to the populace. Countries without natural resources, or ones with corrupt governments, will continue to have serious, and likely worsening, problems.
Thought experiment: If no thought workers are needed to design or engineer a Ferrari, what is needed? My answer is time and natural resources (include energy).
People need purpose. Workplaces provide a very structured, highly managed, perpetual treadmill of purpose. Not purpose in the "self growth" sense, but just something to keep people occupied. "The devil looks for idle hands", and with a large swath of the population* on welfare, there's a good chance he'll find plenty.
[0] that said, population in developed countries is naturally declining so maybe it won't be a problem in the long term either; or maybe, with less need to work, people will be more inclined to raise other people, leading us to both more machines and more humans.