I have no idea how well it holds up to modern reading, but I found it interesting at the time.
He posits two outcomes - in the fictionalised US the ownership class owns more and more of everything, because automation and intelligence remove the need for workers and even most technicians over time. Everyone else is basically a prisoner given the minimum needed to maintain life.
Or we can become “socialist” in a sort of techno-utopian way, realising that the economy and our laws should work for us and that a post-labor society should be one in which humans are free from dependence on work rather than defined by it.
Does this latter one imply a total lack of freedom? It certainly implies dependence on the state, but for most people (more or less by definition) an equal share would be a better share than they can get now, and they would be free to pursue art or learning or just leisure.
I have no idea how well it holds up to modern reading, but I found it interesting at the time.
He posits two outcomes - in the fictionalised US the ownership class owns more and more of everything, because automation and intelligence remove the need for workers and even most technicians over time. Everyone else is basically a prisoner given the minimum needed to maintain life.
Or we can become “socialist” in a sort of techno-utopian way, realising that the economy and our laws should work for us and that a post-labor society should be one in which humans are free from dependence on work rather than defined by it.
Does this latter one imply a total lack of freedom? It certainly implies dependence on the state, but for most people (more or less by definition) an equal share would be a better share than they can get now, and they would be free to pursue art or learning or just leisure.