Hypothetical Future: Pretend it's 50, 500, or 5,000 years from now, and assume the human species still survives.

We've always flirted with the idea of some future utopian dream where machines will someday take care of almost all of our needs. Advances in robotics, micro-surgery, farming, etc...

Everybody will be healthier, eco-friendly, and have enormous amounts of time on their hands to pursue their chosen interests.

Or so the fantasy goes...

And how can you blame us, in the first world, nobody has to go down to the stream/river to fetch water, or pound their clothes on a rock to launder them, we invented indoor plumbing, the faucet, and the washing machine. We don't have to gather stones to sharpen, fix to long sticks of wood, and go out on a hunt and bring down a gazelle, and then using more sticks start a fire, and cook it. We just go to Safeway now and light up the stove.

So it's quite understandable that as technology frees us from many laborious tasks, that we fantasize about a future that WE might not live to see, but in which we might take some comfort that we were a part of helping happen, and that out children, or their children, etc... will one day be able to enjoy.

Labor free, with time to expand the artistry of the mind.

Yet there is one question (it seems to me) that is never addressed in these possible futures.

And here is where I have trouble voicing the question. It goes something like this... "People now have the greatest disdain for people who they feel "do not earn their keep".

"I mean hell man, I work my ass of all day to pay my bills and make sure I've got rent money, and the lights turned on."

You know the the drill... it's one of the reasons "Welfare Reform" was so "popular" and passed easily... all those lazy MoFos GETTING MONEY FOR DOING NOTHING.

Which leads me to the question... "How do we make the transition to people not having to work, yet still being provided for? How will the people still required to work view the first ones not having to work any longer?

How... will we avoid the dangers of, as Dickens had Scrooge say, "the surplus population". Or a new Final Solution for that matter.

Will we be in such agreement in the future, that my concerns here will seem quaint? Because watching the last few weeks of debt deal political arguments, said and unsaid, does NOT give me great hope for any Utopia that I wold want to be associated with.

That was my attempt to ask a really convoluted question, any responses are welcome , and thank you for listening.



Onedit: I proof-read everything but the subject line... fixed, LOL!!!