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Comment by LethargicStud | Hacker News Reader

> Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot.

We are lucky as software engineers, but I was also making the point that if your line of work gets automated, hopefully you can pivot. This applies to everyone, and is similar to when you are no longer enjoying your field of work. Changing careers is not always an option, but let's not forget that it usually is when we talk about automating an entire industry and putting them out of work.

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So give them the support they need to retrain. We're creating so much value with these automated systems - who is the beneficiary? Surely the compassionate thing would be to use some of this resource to help those that have been trodden on by progress/

I'm hoping for a future where the machines do all the work required to provide everything human beings need to survive, AND where we've figured out a reasonable way to distribute resources in a world where not everyone will be able to "contribute to society" by spending huge amounts of their waking time doing something they'd not otherwise do, in exchange for tokens that can be redeemed for food and shelter.

Yes, but that would be communism, so let's just let people who were born into or stumbled into their wealth amass more of it. I think in general we need to start being more thoughtful about how the things we do can sometimes be hurtful to billionaires.

Well, while you’re joking the original idea of communism and what I’ve been taught about Lenin was about excatly this - communism is inevitable because of technical progress. Call it what you want - universal income, handouts, we will end up in communism.

And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean technical progress eventually leads to societal failure? Also I believe we will end up with socialism, not communism.

> And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean technical progress eventually leads to societal failure?

Only if you believe that once an attempt at something has failed, all future attempts will also fail.

> Also I believe we will end up with socialism, not communism.

Socialism is worker control of the means of production, and is an intermediate step along the route to communism, a fully classless and stateless society.

So if your line of work gets automated, you retroactively "picked wrong"?

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