This has come up in five threads now: I live in India. Mumbai, in fact. I'm here for the Government.

[bhikkhu]

38. Technology replaces human labor

Its been the same story for thousands of years, really. The fewer people necessary to produce the products the everyone needs, the more unbalanced and complicated the equation for fair distribution becomes. If one percent of the population produces all the food necessary for everyone, what is a fair price for that food? And if a robotic factory produces all of some desirable product or other, what is a fair price for that product?

A simple market-based or capitalistic economy inherently concentrates wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people as technology and automation reduce the need for labor. Government has always been the balancing factor, but that role also becomes more contentious with progress, as concentrated wealth inherently resists the redistribution necessary for an overall healthy economy.

I don't think there is any solution beyond going from one crisis to the next, but at the moment it is pretty clear we need to work for a more proactive government that works for the good of the whole. The democratic party is clearly the most intentionally effective and motivated in that direction, while the opposition is, realistically, the opposite.