An economy of automated engineering and automated operation presents a new burst requirement on human labor. We need a labor model that can rapidly dedicate people to solve emergency problems caused by automation and yet that automation is essential for continued operation of the economy or for avoiding some future disaster.
In the presumed post-scarcity world, we get the lifestyle without working, without any income. In the extreme, the only possibility for compensation for residual jobs is in some form of an investment. From our modern perspective where income is tied to consumption, income will not be a benefit from working. The future will be a post-income world.
Assuming a post-scarcity world, the big challenge will be how to satisfy the human need for justice. At the very least, there will be two systems of justice: one for the wealthy celebrities and another for the rest. The masses will have very little opportunity to seek justice from the wealthy, especially once democracy is replaced or rendered lame from politics of division of ever smaller identity groups. Over time (especially over generations), we will learn to satisfy our needs for justice though non-governmental means.
Contrary to President Trump’s declaration, we have an inescapable need to have laws that coerce, dominate, and control our lives. There may be some people who think they can live without those laws, but I suspect that will only work when they are on an island isolated from any dissenting peers. There is something deep within us that recognizes that the rule of law is essential to our being humans.
I anticipate a future where we redefine a work-week as the duration of a specific just-in-time gig, a weekend as the gap between gigs, vacations as opportunities presented by anticipation of long gaps but subject to sudden termination when new opportunities occur. The day itself will have break times that will vary day to day and may arise with no advanced notice, leading us to arrange social encounters with near-strangers who happen to share something in common including the fact that they are free at the same time.
Dedomenology has a saturation aspect, requiring very long periods of work stretching over many days regardless of the concepts of standard working hours such as a 40 hour workweek. When something needs to be tackled, it will employ the dedomenologist continuously until there is some level of completion. There will be an endless stream of assignments that someone will need to dive into the depths of the data ocean and staying there for a long time until the assignment is over.
The assumption is that the initial condition of the fully automated economy and government is ideal in terms of a modern middle-class experience for everyone with a guaranteed income and free entertainment. It can only get worse from there. Humans offer nothing to improve the future of the automation. Inevitably, they will segregate into groups. Those groups will strive for improvements of their condition where their best opportunity is at the expense of other groups. The automation will adapt.
