Submitted by thecatneverlies t3_125vn3k in singularity
ShaneKaiGlenn t1_je7uiwv wrote
In Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, he envisions a society in which there are wards of the machines, and everyone else "works" in a state-owned labor corps called the Reeks and Wrecks.
Here is a synopsis from a WaPo article in 1982:
>My own favorite dire view of the economic future comes from Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano." It's a world in which automation has advanced to the point where only a handful of managers and technicians are needed to keep consumer and defense goods streaming off the production lines in a cycleless pattern of economic growth. There's also a large and dispirited standing army and a small class of artisans and service workers--writers, painters, bartenders and the like--living on the fringes of society.
Everyone else is a member of the "Reeks and Wrecks"--the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. They putter around the cities and countryside doing minor maintenance work in outsized battalions and with primitive tools. The state provides all the trappings of suburban life--replacements are timed to avoid perturbations in the production process--and they get a small allowance for recreation and luxuries. But the Reeks and Wrecks are strictly excess baggage and they know it. Everyone is very depressed. Even the managers.
I imagine we may end up with a situation like this, or on the more optimistic side, a form of UBI in which every citizen earns income from the economic output of the machines (think like a dividend fund), and there are additional opportunities in niche markets and entrepreneurial pursuits, but also financial incentives for participating in certain pro-social activities, etc.
Society could be structured almost like a university system, with different "clubs" to keep people engaged and active.
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