I think you touch on one of the greatest problems of the 21st century - coming to terms with the reality that maximizing for wealth creation rather than redistribution means very few people are doing things anyone can predictably assume is beneficiary - such as research, arts, etc. Almost every job lost in the last 50 years due to globalization and automation have been jobs very few people would want to do with their lives, and people always dodge that over some preconceived notion everyone should be putting in 9 - 5 hours.
Though, I think the more acceptable solution is to just drastically cut the hours of the uneducated grunt work that still isn't automated (while spending the time to automate it, because we are at the threshold of eliminating traditional labor and that is a good thing) and just divvy up the available work to the many, maybe even as little as an hour a day, or an 8 hour shift a week.
The problem is changing the entrenched century old agriculture / housing / trade industries to accept a lack of scarcity and dramatic price drops across the board. You want the income from that tiny work week to be the disposable income after providing food, warmth, shelter, and transportation, since it seems silly to even think of anyone living today unable to enjoy their life, when we have so much plenty.
I worked for about 4 months at a factory. My job was thus:
.5 sec: Put bracket in tapping machine.
.5 sec: Press Tap button.
4 sec: wait to Tap bracket.
.25 sec: Air blows tapped part into crate
--Goto Beginning until 120 parts are in crate
Change Crate
--Then Goto beginning.
Do this for 8-12 hours. Yes. a 5.25 second loop.
Other things in this job was if a part was in the crate that wasnt tapped properly (I found out Im also in charge of QC as well..)I would have to manually check the last day's work all by hand.
I was hired temp labor, at 8$ an hour. The machine that would replace me would cost $.5 million. That was one of the worst mind numbing jobs I had ever done. I figured once I started to contemplate suicide, I should probably get out of there.
There's another issue: it seems likely that a minority of people will be in charge of most of the productive work. It's great to cut grunt work into a couple of hours a week if we can, but we probably want to keep talented robot designers occupied full-time. How to provide effective incentives for that, without creating social instabilities? I'm afraid that financial incentives only works to some extent...
The solution is probably to replace useless jobs with useful but unprofitable ones, but to keep people busy with almost-mandatory, socially useful activities. Without growing a management system comparable with the soviet one, in terms of ineffectiveness and corruptibility.
Though, I think the more acceptable solution is to just drastically cut the hours of the uneducated grunt work that still isn't automated (while spending the time to automate it, because we are at the threshold of eliminating traditional labor and that is a good thing) and just divvy up the available work to the many, maybe even as little as an hour a day, or an 8 hour shift a week.
The problem is changing the entrenched century old agriculture / housing / trade industries to accept a lack of scarcity and dramatic price drops across the board. You want the income from that tiny work week to be the disposable income after providing food, warmth, shelter, and transportation, since it seems silly to even think of anyone living today unable to enjoy their life, when we have so much plenty.