there will be people who have money (for example, those who inherited their wealth, or those who own capital/businesses). Their needs may vastly differ from the poor, and because they have money, the market serves them. The jobless poor will just either live on what little the state/charity can provide, or just die on the streets. I don't see basic income as feasible politically nor in practise. Therefore, what you must do now is to ensure that you are one of those who have money.
While I generally agree with your analysis/predictions, there is an alternative outcome to the "dying in the streets" outcome (which IS where we are heading, unfortunately).
The alternative is the same one that happens every time a large enough percentage of the population starts going hungry: they simply take what they need from those that are hoarding it. Sometimes this includes putting those responsible for the hoarding under the guillotine - possibly for revenge and and possibly as a warning for future generations.
The future you descirbe is a prerequisite, and it will get ugly a lot sooner than most people expect. While being one of those with money is probably a good idea when possible, it is also a good idea to prepare for when those who do not have money decide to go full Robespierre.
> I don't see basic income as feasible politically nor in practise. Therefore, what you must do now is to ensure that you are one of those who have money.
> I don't see basic income as feasible politically nor in practise.
I too fear that the general population won't accept until it's very too late the concept that one should not slave their entire lives for just the right to live.
> Therefore, what you must do now is to ensure that you are one of those who have money.
More scary thought if your scenario actually happens: assuming that the tech sector is more likely to survive automation for longer, we'll all here suddenly have close and extended non-tech families and friends looking for our support. So you won't have just yourself to feed from your income. It might be 10 or more people.
In the end we decide whether we'd like to carry a surplus population or not. We choose if a few lucky live off the machines or we use the machines to carry the extras.
I'm afraid the default is to just kill the unneeded with deprivation. That's what happens if we just let things sort themselves out.
The real question is whether or not the machines are suitably advanced this time to prevent a global "French Revolution" against those few from turning the entire world back to cave men.
You might be surprised what rapidly becomes feasible politically at the edge of anarchy.
Just to provide some contrast, society is headed for cultural warfare between this outlook, and the "OMG the Japanese population is declining and that's bad" outlook.
The basic cultural / economic assumptions that is being disagreed on, are that all humans will be participants in the economy as producers and consumers, in which case the existing pyramidal ponzi scheme can keep rolling a little while longer till we run out of cheap oil, or they will not be participants (which is where we've been headed for a couple generations), in which case we may as well create a startup plan for 3-d printed guillotines, because that's the inevitable eventual outcome.
You can see which side of the battleground you're on by analyzing your response to the Japanese population being 100M and shrinking and only having enough economy to support 90M. If you think the shrinking economy is great, because at least the bread riots will be smaller and maybe the smaller population will eventually match the size of the shrinking economy, you're on one side. The other side believes, (I think rather ignorantly) that if the Japanese grew the 100M population to 120M then magically the economy would grow from 90M people size to 120M people size, because it feels really nice to operate under that delusion, or something.
