What will our economic system transform into in the future?

there fish on those asteroids? lumber? veggies? ...our planet is the only home we'll have we need to live within it's means to provide for us...

 

It will transform into a system of property rights, economic liberty, and personal liberty, and zero-toleration for the initiation of aggression.

 

If you want to see what a post-future economy looks like, look at Japan. They already went through their "lost decade" (more like 25-year long recession) and have emerged out of it.

Things didn't start getting better until inflation gradually ate away at the real prices until the people could afford things again (on their lower real incomes after being adjusted for inflation).

This is in no way is saying that inflation in any way helped them, it's just that it concealed the drop in real prices.

The U.S. is probably going to look a little like that, but it's also going to resemble a hybrid of all the countries where it has been taking in people from. Mostly Mexico, but just a little bit of the Middle East too. Expect higher levels of corruption in government and business, and more security guards having to be hired. It's well possible that poverty will become a permanent fixture of the society, the way it is in many Latin American countries.

The U.S. has always been an outlier, resembling by many measures both a First World and Third World country at the same time. That may only increase.
(But by the same token, the phenomena is newly appearing all across Western Europe, Canada and Australia, so it will be hard to compare)

 

Technology. Once 3-D printing evolves to the point that it can work at the molecular level and create anything, supply effectively becomes infinite. When you can convert toxic waste into useful goods, the whole price dynamic goes right out the window, unless capitalists decide to artificially make goods scarce.

 

Then prices would drop to zero and everything would be free. It would be like the Garden of Eden. Let's hope we get there soon.

 

Where is the motivation going to come from to produce anything that is already in abundant supply relative to demand and therefore not worth anything?

 

When production only requires pressing a button on a machine or better yet, telling an AI robot to do it for you.

 

If one lives in a Garden of Eden such as you describe, nobody will need to do any work whatsoever. Anything they want will be in abundant supply. I want a Lamborghini, I get one. Abundant supply.

 

Those robots and machines have to be built, services, and powered. That requires capital. Raw materials have to be mined and refined, power sources have to be built, etc. Somebody has to pay for all of this. In the end its the consumer, so it will still be capitalism, and the laws of supply and demand will still apply.

 

I assume this is humor. We immediately got booted out of the Garden of Eden. Any new version will not work out well either. lol

 

Problem is, where will disposable income come from once it takes 20 percent of a population to supply all goods and services provided by the robots and AI? Capitalism is a working system due to the fact that it generates the income via wages to buy what is being produced and what is needed for the society to live. Remove the income producing jobs and how does one then get the money needed to buy what is being made and supplied by robots and AI?

Now any new sectors in an economy that would replace the jobs lost to robotics and AI, must be jobs in huge numbers, which robots and AI cannot do cheaper. No one has a clue to what such a new sector or sectors would be to replace those jobs lost. At least when we moved from agriculture to industry, we knew damn well what would replace agri jobs, a farming based economic model.

Fact is, removing the wages from capitalism implodes capitalism for robots do not consume what they are producing and AI does not buy the services it provides people. And one wonders if we will just wait for capitalism to implode before it makes the light bulb come on, finally seeing what was so obvious and self evident.

When this issue is brought up, all that one gets is that we moved from an agri based economy to a industrial, manufacturing economy and something like that will of course happen again. But there is a major incoherence here, for it must be a sector or sectors, that AI and robots cannot do cheaper. And it must be such a large sector as to replace all production jobs and service sector work, or most of those kinda of jobs. Given that an economy has paid wages for basically two areas....production of goods and supplying services. What else is there that would be large enough to employ 80 percent of a workforce? Outside of goods and services?

So, just imagine that when we moved from agriculture as a major employer, to manufacturing, what would have happened if at that time the agri jobs were taken over by robots and AI, and the new manufacturing sector began life being manned by robots and AI, with only a scent few humans needed? Use your imagination and education, and tell me what would have happened? To the no income people, which is most of us? You have robotic farms and factories providing food, and goods, and AI providing servicies, but no one has a job paying a wage to use to buy what the machines are making and providing. So what happens? Use your imagination. And in the process you may come upon what our new economic model will look like. Solve the problem of no income to buy what is being provided by machines.

 

We will always be capitalist. Capitalism is merely the private ownership/control of resource. So long as everyone is allowed to own their own shoes and underwear, capitalism exists. America will not soon be giving up private property.

However, we will likely always be collectivist as well. So long as there are public roads and a government that runs on taxes, there is public (collective) property.

Every nation on earth is a mix of the two (except perhaps North Korea, i imagine even their shoes and underwear technically belong to the emperor...).

The question is not 'will there be capitalism?', but 'how much capitalism will there be?'.

 

What if there aren't public roads?

 

You have laid out the problem of this robot/AI Utopia, that some people think is coming, very clearly. It simply can't happen. If it ever came to the point where a large percentage of the population had no work and therefore no money to buy anything the robots would be useless.
The other major problem would be social unrest. People are not fulfilled or happy doing nothing. Even if it was possible to create a utopia where everyone could have everything without doing anything the first thing that would happen is that they would destroy it, and that is a good thing. If we ever become a species that is content to remain infantile, not needing or wanting to grow up, with our every need being seen to by robots, that will be our doom. Human nature will never allow that to happen - at least, I certainly hope not.

 

I think it would be advantageous to look at your second point and discuss it. The premise is that all needs are met by robots thus there is no need for capitol for things. That leaves what is the purpose of a person and their life. You say no one is happy doing nothing and I agree. But if your needs are met without putting for labor to acquire that does that mean you will be infantile your whole life? Of course we can think of examples of individuals that had everything given to them and they turn out to be useless. But there are also examples of people of means that have had everything given to them that turn to other pursuits of worth such as writing, science, and art.

So I propose that in a world where all of ones needs are met you will have two types of people. Those that use their freedom of need to improve themselves and mankind and those that sit at home and leach from the system procreating. The goal should be how to be increase the chances for useful people while limiting the impact of the useless.

I ask you, if tomorrow you and your family where guaranteed security and wealth beyond imagining would you just sit down at a couch for life eating and watching TV or would you try and DO something with your life.

 

A more efficient economy, if some on the left can help it!

 

To answer your question, if I were to become extremely wealthy tomorrow it would not mean that I and my family members would be useless. There are still many problems in the world, not only in the third world, but here in the first world. So there would still be many meaningful challenges to apply one's self to. In a world where everything is taken care of by robots most people would not be able to find anything useful to do. I think this would be disastrous. Fortunately I don't believe such a world is possible even if it were desirable, which it certainly is not.

 

This is something I have thought about, that the average and below average man would have a very tough time in a world where the only true purpose of a person is creative and intellectual pursuits. What is the point of the below average intellect person in a world that does not need you?

 

I believe it is true that idle hands are the devil's workshop, so if we ever approach a time when everything is available to everybody without effort, and large segments of the population have nothing to do, don't need to do anything, and can't find anything constructive to do, there will be great chaos and destruction. It won't work.

 

Or those people will have to be controlled some how. Either through entertainment, propaganda, drugs, or force.

 

I think, in one imagined version of the future, this is where the rich, global elite want to reduce the global population before entering us into an era of major social programs and utopia. That would be fewer people to support and more easily controlled.

 

Perhaps but without some form of family planning the population will skyrocket to unimagined proportions. Bored people procreate. I do see a point where unspecialized human labor will not be needed. There needs to be more to a person then the acquisition of property.

 

People are pretty silly about how they don't act in their best interest.

 

People will like video games. But someone has to get off the couch from time to time so that more games can be developed.

 

Yes they do, the intellectuals and artists will have plenty to do. It is Bob the lower IQ guy that likes football and just does not care much about reading that is in trouble. He cant develop a video game. He cannot even be trained to.