These four thoughts are interesting. Conceivably in a futuristic world one could see the costs of production and service industries shifted to robots. If there gets to be a point where there are just not enough jobs anymore and the actual movement of money starts to crawl to a halt [because more individuals with cash and higher propensities to consume allow money to flow through an economy] the system would eventually collapse on itself, wouldn't it? If the rich could only sell to the rich the poor masses would still exist and eventually a point would be reached when even the rich can't sell solely to each other anymore.
This sort of thinking almost reaches utopia levels. People wouldn't really be incentivized to create and currency as a modicum of exchange would collapse on itself as things stop being produced to be readily sold. People or the masses in this scenario would serve smaller and smaller marginal usefulness to the point where the masses rise up or the rich simply can't carve out a niche anymore themselves in this new world. Capital flow in Ricardian economics would once again regain its tensions and states would aim for overall production. To satisfy those who don't feel productive one would have to change society to value things like leisure, games, whatever to distract from the shrinking numbers of actual employment. Eventually technology would only serve the hedonistic ideas of man - wouldn't it in this theoretical scenario?
It's not really utopian. Firstly, the rich
can just trade with each other. You don't need an infinite number of actors to have an economy, and if people drop out of an economy, the economy could continue.
The main risk is the price of fundamental assets. As the economy grows, the
utility of various inputs (wood, air, fuel, water) will rise and rise. This will cause the
price of those goods to rise as wealthier and wealthier players bid on the price. This will cause a general (effective) poverty in those that cannot compete.
The second issue is that these people will be buying their essential services from non-poor organisations, and thus their consumption will not create jobs amongst the poor. There can never be 'second' economy composed of poor players if the rich
always out-compete the poor in service-delivery.
Quinoa was the latest example, but think of it as an analogy, mostly.
What's new about all this?
Technology making highly skilled workers superfluous? It's been happening since at least the beginning of the industrial revolution (whenever that was).
Oh, for sure. No disagreement. The potential problem is the
rate at which jobs can be replaced vs. the relative costs of re-training. Retraining someone into a new career takes time and money. In the olden days, the amount of retraining was negligible and so there were alternatives as the layoffs occurred. But, we're looking at a pretty impressive tech-curve in the future. There's a real risk that the cost of making a robot for your
next job is cheaper than training you to do it after you got laid off from your first job. This fundamentally means that the robot will cost less than the re-trained employee.
Not saying that this is
a priori a bad thing, but it will require a work around.
