Inflation mystery. An Aha! moment for me.

[kandrathe]

What happens to "an honest day's work for an honest day's pay" when there is no demand for the work? Who owns the profits of production when the producers are robots?

I realize this is a serious discussion... but someone has to mention Steel Beach by John Varley in this context. The novel explores the concept of when there is little demand for work at all (the only work left is in entertainment). Even more than simply no demand for work, this is a society where the classic economic problem of scarcity is no longer a problem.

Unfortunately in the current system (and in the socialist, and communist systems) and in the social mindset, if you don't work then you have no value. I didn't read Steel beach, but I caught up on the plot summary. It seems to me that inn the Steel Beach world, Hildy's suicides are an escape from the same life of insignificance. In our times, the owners rule, the white collar worker is 1st class and blue collar, is 2nd class. And the non-workers are tolerated as a burden upon the state (system).

And... I think you are getting at something in our culture, when in order to survive, an individual after 50 years of production, spends their retirement years earning a subsistence wage standing at the entrance of Walmart greeting shoppers. I wince, when I see gray haired fry cooks at McDonalds trying to learn Spanish. After the dissolution of the extended family, and the family itself, we've found that the paternalistic "state" and "corporation" are rather heartless.

We live in the land of freedom, but for myself, the social contract has been pretty one sided in favor of the employer (paying me a fraction of my value), and then the government (taking 1/3 to 1/2 of the employer's, and employee's production). Imagine if it was normal that workers might secure even a small fixed portion of their production (physical and intellectual).