They didn't have a period of prosperous capitalism first, that lenin predicted they would need. There are two problems to face with commuism. First if your country and people are all poor, splitting up what little you have and sharring it equally just means a lot of people have next to nothing. Secondly if all people are equal, and paid equal, how do you convince some people their job is to clean toilets while other people are testing video games. A period of properous capitilism while the country builds industry and gets rich solves the first problem, the second problem is solved with robot toilet cleaners.

I disagree. In that scenario there can still be a market, its just a market for very expensive items, for only the people with money (robot owners). You are right about the slums, riots, and chaos, but that could also be solved with robots (terminator style).

I fear you maybe a little short sighted. Very smart AI is just around the corner (and i'm not talking ibm watson, i'm talking hardwired neuromorphic chips based on our own brains). There won't be much a human can do, that it wont be able to do better. I'm on the optimistic side, and think we will have human level ai in 10 years, but even if you are not, 25-50 years is easily more than enough time to complete it (think how far computers have come in 30 years). If the computer is as smart as a human it won't matter how many training courses you go to, the computer can complete them almost instantaneously, then work 24/7, possibly even at a faster rate.

Hail the rise of robo-communism, as capitalism is a dead end. If only we wern't told so much how evil communism is. Interestingly, true communism (never actully tried) requires a period of prosperus capitalism first.

Japan tried the same trick for a decade or two, before then taking over the industries they were imitating.

If the bike is light enough and you stick to the smooth road no suspension is fine (a lot if not most bikes have no suspension). If your bike has the weight of a motor and a battery on board, and you like to take immiginative shortcuts over curbs, side walks, and parks, then front suspension is preferable (maybe even rear suspension if your bike weighs enough). Most suspension can be manually set these days, so if you ussually obey the law and only ride on the road you can set it to be quite stiff. You are right though, horses for courses and all.

From someone who built his own electric bike, the one shown is pretty crap. zero suspension on a heavier than normal bike is a bad idea, and will limit what you can do. Also 250 watts is nothing, i know thats all that is legal in europe, and actully too powerfull for australia, but you can have 750 watts in america, and i havn't met a cop with multimeter yet; ultimately the more power, the more usefull, and fun (although it adds to the price of motor and battery). Lastly its too expensive, mine using a mountain bike frame, 1kw motor, and 1/2 kwh battery cost around $2000, it dosn't look as pretty, but it will kick this bikes ass (full offroad capable and will do 55kph on the flat if the wind is blowing the right way).

Working for google is now definatly working against the common good, however i wont have hard proof for around another 10 years (when it is too late).

I can understand wanting to get away from google. Whether apple or microsoft are also guility is different, with them you are atleast the customer, you pay them for services and software; however with google you are the product and google sells you to all their customers (other big evil corporations). Now if google had the same integrity they seemed to have at the start, you might be more inclined to keep on going with the deal; but with them taking ownership of your email and mining it for data, forcing everyone onto google+, the locking down of android, buying double click, killing of projects that arn't profitable enough, i can easily understand peoples fears.

Hardly, these people are making all the same mistakes google has (dual, see through, full size glasses lenses please). For an acquisition you need to come up with a product people actually want. Solve all the problems, generally put in all the hard yards, and be able to take the market by storm; then you can get a few billion to shut you up, while google uses it to make the same money every quarter.

They will only let us fly to work in these multirotor vehicles when computers are the ones doing the flying. When you cant trust some one to use an indicator, or keep out of the right hand lane when not overtaking, then your not going to be able to trust them with another dimension, and multiple spinning blades of doom (well maybe if you get them through the long process of getting a piolts licence). Also if you want a full size mutirotor aircraft electric has a lot of advantages, less wear and tear, easier system to test for propblems before flight, and the motors need very quick changes in speed for stability, which electronic speed controlls and electric brushless motors do excelently; we just need better electrical storage, which is on its way.

The only way i see humans being able to stay in the loop is brain upgrades. If you get a few proccessors, and fast memory/storage up there, and the bus connection to our consciousness dosn't cause too much of a drag factor on the machine, then we maybe able to keep up for a bit longer. That said i have no doubt we will exceed human brain speeds with other tech in the future (current neruomorphic chips are slowed down over a thousand times, just so humans can keep up with whats going on).

With suffcient AI inteligence, per human productivity can theoritcally be infinite, because there is no reason for everyone on earth to have infinte productivity (2 times infinity is stil infinity) only a few rich people will under capitalism.

answer. The robot will work for a lot less, and for a lot longer, with a lot less complaining.

You shouldn't call yourself a geek if you don't think those things will be able to be done by a computer at some point. Science will be one of the first from the list to suffer as robot reserchers will be able to work a lot quicker, processing a lot more information, and trying many more theories than a human could. Actors, artists and musicians may stay human, not becuause robots couldn't do it, just because we will feel better about it (like human sports will keep going, even though the robot olympics will be a lot more impressive); although actors will be able to be made full CGI; AI musicians will be able to play thousands of instuments at once at a fraction of the setup speed; artists, well i don't buy a lot of convential art so i'm not the best judge, but maybe if it was at robot made price maybe i would.

I understand that fine and agree with you. What i think you are failing to understand (which is what the story is about) is the next machine revoultion, wont be like the last one, because we wont be putting humans in the loop any more. In the past revoultions more jobs were created (because of the expansion and the need for human decision making), but soon in this revoultion, anything you can do, a robot will be able to do cheaper and better. It will be a hard sell to share holders that you should use a human for a job when a good robot is aviliable. We arn't replacing the OX in this revoultion (like the agricultural revoultion did) we are replacing the human.