Regarding the recent Bill Gates comment that perhaps all of 3 vocations will survive replacement by Artificial Intelligence and automation following the next decade or so, in broad daylight is AI the perfect example of a demand manufactured to meet preordained goods and services. Nobody asked for it but its producers desperately search for applications. The billionaires pushing for total automation, have they given no thought to who then will be the consumers once human labor is no longer required to earn pay? Equally, do the consumers today seriously believe that the CEOs who will go to any lengths to avoid lending them a hand, these same powers will magically float all of society once workers are no longer needed? So those at either end of the spectrum looking to benefit from the circumstance are categorically retarded. I see it as the very same lunacy from advocates of Universal Basic Income, where nothing is done to prevent costs of living to then be inflated accordingly, not without capping maximum earnings, which nobody supports because everyone justifies the existence of wealth in hopes of getting what they feel they themselves deserve, the entrapment and exploitation and extortion necessary to generate the prestige and entitlements always somehow pardonable when it’s our very own reaping the benefits.
Science fiction has compelled real world science to extend lifespans more and more, but sci-fi always had it ass-backwards. The most powerful and authoritative invariably burn out and self-destruct in their crusades to fill the bottomless pit of ego, but the workers will suffer the extended lifespans, to continue working, saving employers money on shelling out for training and 401k alike. Offspring of we the public won’t have golden years of retirement packages to end-cap their lives after 4 or 5 decades of servitude, no, our children’s children will likely have to wait centuries. Unless they’re shit at their jobs, then they’ll just have their bodies burned by the towering mounds as proper society quietly does with its homeless today. Suffice to say, and quite thankfully, technologists universally succeed only in developing new incendiary devices.
The world is not collapsing under its own bloat from divisiveness of politics or religion, but because everyone is right and never ever at fault, especially for their own troubles. Nobody contributing to such a culture is an innocent bystander, not when their own eyes are forever bigger than their stomachs. Who can be a true victim of a con while believing they actually deserve what’s promised by whichever carrot on whichever stick? Nobody deserves anything but a natural lifespan, so much comes down to that even if seemingly anyone can find exceptions without too much effort.
All harmless fun occurs as millions of others know real torment. That’s not a new development. One person’s leisure is made possible by another person’s hell.