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Comment by spydum | Hacker News Reader

This idea of post-scarcity is very troubling to me. Idle hands are the devils tools. http://dcentric.wamu.org/2012/04/the-effect-of-youth-unemplo... People need purpose and to work, it's not just about earning a wage.

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We are exiting a relatively short period in history with mass employment for cash wages. "People need a purpose and to work" is at best a bald assertion in light of a longer view of history, and, at worst, a pretty bad assumption about the kind of people who you want to make sure are tired at the end of the day and not out at night.

Why is work good? N.B. this is not the same question as "Why is income inequality bad?"

In addition to using some of the newly created wealth for paying fixed incomes, as the author mentions, we should be using that money to make higher education free.

The author says, "let them eat cake, smoke pot, and play video games." I say let them study art history (or CS). Who knows, maybe it will inspire them to do something useful in our brave new world.

Education is not the silver bullet to a good economy. At every point in which the economy bloomed, there were sufficient jobs for people who are not college-educated. Manufacturing used to fill that gap. Part of the problem is that companies are in a race to the bottom. TechCrunch Touched on that just briefly. The most vital economies always have a read distribution of wealth through services. At some point the rest of the country, the non-tech savvy, will have to redistribute farewell to the people in the tech sector and vice versa. Wealth creation free handful of people is not the answer by itself. Because we see that does nothing for the economy at large.

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