The concept of "barter" is actually quite interesting, and often misunderstood. People (and economist) just assumed that earlier, it worked as it does wtih money now, but just without the money part... It has been found however when looking at old societies and tribes to have worked very different however! There where 2 kinds of barter actually: the social trading inside the same society (village or tribe) and the trade between different villages. People did actually not barter in the sense "I will trade my cow for your 5 barrels of grain", at all. On the social barter side it was actually a system of debt, rather then direct trade. You seldom exchanged items, animals (or daughters) against something predeterminded. Instead you "gave" it away, with the social glue and norm that when you need somehing, you would get something back.... so in fact a constant system of favors owned and debts that you would get repaid later. And on the "intertribe barter" It has been found that bartering was actually much for of a ritual - on the old times it often required a long and hazardous journey to get somewhere where things you didn't produce yourself where made. And the "exchange rate" was set by tradition, and not some vague understanding of what a cow was worth.... To quote David Graeber:

I agree that there is are problems, and it is not somthing that can be changed over night (or will be changed over night for that matter). One big problem is that society (the western that I know of atleast) still teaches and trains people for bluecollar jobs. However I think we are learning and adapting the way our society works, and the recent focus in entrepreneurship (in europe where I live atleast) is proof in that dircetion. People should be working with what they think is fun / interesting, and they should get the tools to understand how to make that for a living. That is, in my opinion, the best way to the future - getting poeple to do useful and, for them, meaningful tasks, instead of mindless repeating tasks they do not feel a part of.

I don't understand why most comments seem negative to the idea of mass robotic. This is great - more efficient production = lower prices. Ofcourse this isn't the end of capitalism or mankind - in fact it actually is capitalism and mankind at it's best - finding new and better solutions to problems, in order to free up resources for new things and inovations This is a good step forward. As someone else noted earlier, we humans are not good at repetetiv work tasks - so why should we do it? If robots are better at it, then we all win - the workers can move on to jobs that don't cause them strain injuries or worse ils, and the producers get lower costs (which means the consumers get lower costs aswell in the long run, as long as there is competition). And even if the price would not sink directly but the company would have better profit instead - why is that bad? Those shareholderns (you and me in some cases through different funds and retirement schemes) will get more money that they will spend on stuff. They will not just put that money under there pillows - it will be used to buy things that other produce. And guess why we classify the western economies as "service based economies"? Because that is what people want to spend money on - a nice vacation or a pleasant meal on a restaurant or whatever else. Saying that robots are bad for us is like saying that cars are bad - that because they make our traveltimes alot faster we will get too many people with too much time left over because the can now drive instead of walking / horseback riding. But ofcourse that is not true - in reality we travel alot more instead, because it now is much cheaper, quicker and more conviniet. The same goes for all forms of automation - we will just buy / use / spend more time with other devices instead, as they are so much cheaper / better / more convinient. Just think at all those manhours that go wasted in those huge factories - would it not be much better use to use that brainpower and human ingenuity to get new innovations and a better world? That humans move out of blue collar jobs shouldbe seen as a huge step for mankind, a sign that we finally have moved out of the first phase of the industrialization.

Good thoughts, but there is one problem to the logic: All the resources we use up are still on earth (except a few couple of tons that we have sent into to space so far). So the resources are still here - and they would quite likely be easy to "mine" again, as they should be concentrated and in relative pure form, from our previous use of them (as whole pieces of plastic or large pieces of metal for example). Even all the oil is still on earth - just needs alot of plantlife to get it out of the atmosphere. Not entirely sure (no waste / resource expert), but as far as I can tell the resources should atleast be left here on earth. (ironically this would actually mean that the only way to "fail" would be to try to go out into space alot and not succeed - as material sent into space would be lost for future civilizations)

Why are they leeches? What do they leech? What benefits do they enjoy in the US, and what do they not give back? Just wondering, if you could give some example it would helt alot.

Sorry, but if you payed attention in the economics lesson you would know that this isn't the whole picture. There is a very simple solution - innovation. We cannot know what the advancement we have today will bring us tomorrow - be it the invention of steam engines that made thousands of factory jobs redundant, or be it computers, that made thousands of officejobs redundant by simply being more effecient. And is won't stop - even if cheap labour disappears (China now, Bangladesh / Laos tomorrow and probably Africa after that), then still automatisation will get better and better, and make more and more jobs "dissapear". But that is not a problem. People will still be around, and looking for things to do. And some of these people will be brave / stupid / smart enough to get an idea that they think solves a problem, be it a better payment system, a new way to build houses or just how to make better tasting coffee. And those people that get these ideas and see those problems that can be "fixed" by it, they will create companies and employ people to make it a reality. It doesn't matter if it is called service industries, or financial industries or anything else - it might just be all office work for what i know that is the future - but as long as people go around and get ideas, and more importantly, have a motivation for making those ideas reality, then they will create jobs. The only sure thing that would make the US jobless is removing incentives for people to follow through on there ideas, or for removing the ability to think of new ideas. But I don't think the US has to worry here - communism was quite good at removing those 2 factors, but still it wasnt the end of the world (it was however the end of communism).

This sounds fair. Being able to read and write clearly isn't an instinct, so it might just be that talking is just something we learn because we have the capabilities to do so... Makes you wonder what else there might be that we simply haven't "discovered" yet!