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Comment by Tsagadai | Hacker News Reader

This isn't really a new issue. Inequity between classes, races, genders, religions (and lack of), sexuality and upbringing has existed for at least as long as economic and cultural analysis has. There is a more fundamental question which society has avoided answering: how do you pay people by merit when some people's work is devoid of merit. Many comedian have responded with "soylent green" style answers which is appalling but more of an answer than most people can provide (the usual response is, "I don't know").

If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their domain do?

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More concerning, what happens to the hundreds of millions of people who don't have a domain to even be (or not be) a rockstar in? When unskilled labor available outstrips demand for unskilled labor, we start to see college diplomas as a requirement for filling a position as a Starbucks Barista.

My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?

Eventually, when we reach the stage where low end human labor is worthless, we'll need some flavor of socialism. Such socialism will be so cheap that no one will care, however.

We aren't there yet, however. We are also not at the point where most people's work is devoid of merit. We are merely at the point where many people lost their old jobs and are unwilling to take new jobs in other sectors.

For example, consider an unemployed construction worker. There is plenty of work waiting for him - cleaning houses, picking strawberries, etc. But he remains unemployed because he is unwilling to take other work.

In seriousness, the only real solution appears to be cognitive enhancement: cybernetic, genetic, and/or pharmacological. The Singularity may or may not be near, but till we get AI we need to increase human intelligence.

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