To the people who hold that view (not you, clearly) I would say, I have never met anyone who doesn't do anything; the hopelessly unemployable people I've met have usually been a really poor match to the workplace. They don't like the 9-5, they don't like being told what to do, they don't like hierarchy. They tend to invest heavily in their hobbies and non-work interests. This is probably something which hackers and entrepreneurs can relate to, btw. Of course, it makes no sense to people who feel comfortable and warm inside a hierarchy, like to know their place, and like being told what to do (and, hopefully, acquiring a coterie which they in turn can tell what to do).

Personally I share your vision of a more interesting and stimulating future free from the shackles of mandatory work and based around willing collaboration. I'm not sure it will happen though, if a small group of people with wealth can opt out of society altogether, except for using it as a source of greater wealth, on which they refuse to pay any tax.

I'm not opposed to capitalism, btw, I just feel it should serve everyone, not just the few.

I personally am against capitalism, I think we don't even need money in the long run. I'm pretty sure we could obsolete it within the next few decades. Just distribute goods according to need…

I'm not saying we shouldn't remove work, but culture will need time to adapt. Maybe we should try to reduce working hours and days - move to a 4-day week, then a 3-day - rather than abolishing work all in one go.

would you know what to do when all of your work would essentially be shallow and useless? can you entertain yourself 24h?

Look at the Raspberry Pi - only today a tutorial on creating a basic Pi command-line OS was front page of Hacker News. And yet we all have access to highly sophisticated operating systems with slick GUIs.

Discovery and exploration is its own reward. It doesn't matter if someone or something else has already discovered it.

And even if we're not needed for research it doesn't take the joy out of doing it anyways; Learning is pretty much self-rewarding. Plus there will always be enough projects to keep yourself busy, even if it's "just" organizing the next rave, party or other social event. But before that happens we will have plenty of new frontiers to conquer.

(of course, I would procrastinate all of these things even if I had the time to do them...)

It's always important to remind those people that it's better to have some parasites at the bottom of society (under basic income) than to have parasites at the top of it (under the current corporate elite).

I support BI because it will change the workplace dynamic outright. It will be focused more on getting things done and improving the world and less on servility.

Basic income, whether its a good idea (for society in general or not), will not come to be. Those who have something to lose with BI will certainly oppose it, and they are the people who have real voting power (or should i say lobby/political power).

Unless, the west turns on its head and adopt communism...but i highly doubt that.

I guess most people will spend a very large chunk of their newly won time socializing and I don't see anything wrong with that. If everyone can celebrate each and every day of their lives, I'm strongly in favor of it. :)

but some parasites are more equal than others - namely, those who owns the machines.

You might ask, why do some own the machines (or means of production), while others dont? Its not a question i m in authority or knowledgable enough to answer, but my take on it is that its a snowball effect - once you gain enough capital (or, as i called it above - means of production), you can effectively get other people's productivity as a lever to increase your own. Note, only those who already have capital can do this - people who cannot accrue capital either take big gambles (like borrowing lots of money without being able to pay it back, if they can borrow it at all). Or they just don't do it, and remain status quo. Either way, the only option left for them is to live or work. Thus the cycle perpetuates, and this is the "cause" of the wealth divide - not because some people worked harder, but because opportunities don't come knocking equally.

In aa he world where automation is completely replaced all labour, either everyone is capable of being an owner, and thus, all profit to be made using automation is so thin you don't get much of an advantage doing it compared to someone else. Or, some small group basically owns all means of production, and essentially owns the world and everyone in it (either via their power to control resource supply, since they own it!), or indirectly via lobby/"taxes" they pay that the rest of the meeples gets to live off.

I m hoping the first scenario comes to pass, but i highly doubt it. Looking at the world now, its much more likely that the 2nd scenario comes to pass.

Look at open source 3D printers. Did you know there is an open library for smart materials? For genetic information? Open Hardware projects are multiplying, think arduino, raspberry pi, beagleboard…

I mean shit - even the last CCCamp had it's own piece of open hardware. I myself am thinking about developing a little robot that can tend plants, basically an open source toolchain for vertical farming… There is more and more stuff like this coming up all the time.

And of course there's even an open source civilization starter kit you can inform yourself about at http://opensourceecology.org

IMHO the risk of one faction being all-powerful is nearly zero. We have good times ahead. Even though the road may have a few bumps.

I think that is the only way to get the current elite ("the 1 percent") behind basic income; tie it to voluntarily sterilization.

Right now, society's really fucking barbaric. If you don't have health insurance and get sick, you die in a lot of pain and spend your last hours in some ER. If you're unemployed for 6+ months, you can't get a job unless you hire a guy like me to consult you on how to re-work your story and arrange references, and even then it's dicey because there's only so much that can be done. This isn't civilization; it's the decaying remnant of one. It either improves dramatically (which I wouldn't rule out) or it falls further because right now it even turns good people into vultures[0].

[0] Actually, I dislike this metaphor. Vultures are good citizens; but you know what I mean.