Comment Re:Um, wrong cause for the effect. (Score 3, Insightful) 530
Picture a desert island with two people. At first they both work all day long to survive. Later, they improve their lot, to where they each only have to work half the time to survive. The other half can be spent loafing, or working to get more comfortable. Is one of them entitled to relax and do nothing while the other needs to work all day long to support them? Of course not. Each person has the option of working full time to improve their position, part time to simply survive, or they may die. They aren't owed anything.
Your analogy is missing a third party: the absentee owner of the island. A more accurate analogy would be that, having developed a more efficient means of harvesting coconuts, one of the two island inhabitants receives a slightly larger number of coconuts than before, while the second fellow's previous coconut wages were instead diverted to the island owner's offshore pina colada factory, leaving the second fellow to eke out a decidedly calorie-free lifestyle.
This is, in the island owner's view, the proper order of things: he paid the fellow to develop a more efficient coconut harvesting strategy, and thus is entitled to a nice drink at the end of the day.
This is, in the first fellow's view, also the proper order of things: he developed the improved technique, and thus is entitled to a few extra coconuts.
In the second fellow's view, any discussion about the abstract problems of coconut division in an isolated island economy is pointless academic frippery because he is, at this point, starving to death on a fucking desert island.
Sooner or later, productivity gains will land us in a scenario where there isn't enough work to go around, and the jobs that do remain will require so much technical expertise as to render them unattainable for most people. For the remaining majority, the question is: what the fuck are we going to do in order to earn our daily coconuts?