I’d like to explore an idea. Given that more jobs are disappearing due to technological advances - assuming this is akin to the mechanization of farming; historically speaking - what new jobs become available?

I am taking UBI off the table for the sake of exploring other avenues society could take (for good or bad).

One thing that is apparent enough is the growing need for ‘entertainment’ - games, movies, music, podcasts etc.,. This would seem to create a potential society where our lives are our products on the market rather than anything we do (we’d merely turn into groups defined by the billboard we attach ourselves to). What that would do or how exactly it would be monetized - given the products are produced without manual labour - would likely come down popularity contests and competitions leading to a more ‘celebrity-driven’ society.

Another thing that spring to mind is a kind of ‘hedonistic’ society - meaning driven by the pursuit of personal pleasure - in which poorer people become enticed into a self-made slavery of sorts. Giving themselves to people to survive almost like a pet - ‘charity’ turned sour!

Ask yourself now. If almost everyone where you lived has no income and there were no jobs involving basic manual labour and hospitality had been reduced to such a degree that those job opportunities were filled already what is left other than a form of slavery; perhaps called being a ‘personal assistant’? No need for office workers, call centres, manufacturing, sales teams - beyond a few programmers and designers - management would be reduced due to no ‘man’ to manage, no HR or Health and Safety classes, etc.,. Such a paradise starts to look very dull very quickly once we move beyond the joy of having so much leisure time as people, a great many, don’t actually have the slightest inkling what to do with their free-time other than party or lie on a beach. Once that is done what is left other than the welcoming oblivion in any shape or form we can grasp at - drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll.

My actual rough-shod prediction is that once human society hits such a point the main fungible commodity will be ‘human potential’ and that society will - no idea how - move beyond ‘material’ wealth and instead beyond a group of competing ‘educational organisations’ where innovation, creativity and originality will become the number one prize; which people will ‘follow’ (clicks or whatever future equivalent) based in entertainment.

By this I mean we’ll see something similar to - but not equivalent to - people as ‘pets’. We don’t NEED dogs or cats, yet many people have such affection, love and devotion for these creatures that they are not simply ‘possessions’. I think most of us will, and to some degree always have been, ‘pets’ of some grander design we attach to superficially.

It may even be that AI will be our master - assuming this isn’t already partially the reality of the world today and AI technologies won’t expand far beyond a minimalist ‘creativity’ in production of art and political schemata - we’d still be left with demographics based on fashions, trends and popularity, yet in a magnified level.

For myself in is about intellect and art. What puzzles me is what those who have little to interest in such things would do with themselves? Forced into a corner will everyone turn to the artistic and intellectual development for the sake of development or stagnate? By stagnate I’d expect a huge epidemic of psychologically unhinged people wailing against a wall of existential dread.