The problems facing work are robotization and the quick redundancy of skills. Once you learned a skill that lasted you for life, but now a few years after learning it you need to retrain. Robots are taking jobs. Where will all this lead?
Big business will press further with robotization, but there is a self-limiting element to this process, for as people are rendered jobless by robotization, they will be less able to purchase the goods that business makes, causing declining profit ,and so the businesses may not be as able to automate as they would like. The market for personal robots, like robot butlers, will stall.
But deprived of work the people will not be content with bread and circuses, as was the population of ancient Rome, they will turn their hands to crafts. Just think of what has happened in Detroit, as jobless workers take land and cultivate it. Not everyone can cultivate, but there are a range of other skills that can be exercised. A counter-economy of small traders will arise, parallelling the large industrial economy and in competition with it. Of course, big business will try to use lobbying and political influence to undermine the counter-economy, but we must be ready for this and resist their attempts firmly.
Agriculture is a case in point. Large farms are oil users, in their tractors and in the fertilizer that they use, which is oil based. As oil fails, a farming model will collapse. Some big farms will survive, but they will do so against the tide wich is to go for small scale, intensive production, not at the expense of the earth, but in harmony with it. The extractive economy, which takes from the Earth and gives nothing in return will be failing, though those who benefit from it will desperately cling on. Permaculture and organic production will become the norm, by default, as the farming model which opposes them collapses.
Pressure on food supplies will see movements to green the cities, so we will see the growth of community gardens, green walls and green roofs. Schools will have their own gardens, and food production will become a high status job, I hope.
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We have a giant fusion reactor called the sun, Derdriu. It is a free and long-lasting source of power that does not require expensive technology. So I do not think that fusion reactors can or will compete with solar power.Nuclear power has been a false promise. We were once promised nuclear energy too cheap to meter: it did not happen, and I suspect that fusion will suffer the same fate.
You are right, robots don't compete with living things, and the industrial society that produces robotics may not be for ever.
In thirty years time we may have lost some species and breeds, but failing ecological disaster most animals will still be with us.
frankbeswick, Thank you for the philosophy, practicalities and products.
Do you see nuclear fusion in the 2050 power picture? Popular Mechanics fit the article Patents Secured for Revolutionary Nuclear Fusion Technology by Caroline Delbert in its 24 February 2020 offerings.
American toads and spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) have been forming nightly choruses in the vernal pool behind me since shortly after area woodchucks saw their shadows. Nothing robotic is competitive with them or the bluebirds in the Chinese chestnut and the mimosa. How would you see cultivated and wild animals faring 30 years hence?
Thanks for alerting me to my overlooking social skills deficit. I knew that there would be something missing. The metaphor of the pyramid scheme is apt.
You have addressed a multitude of potential problems. Resources that are not renewable are like a pyramid scheme, our leaders keep avoiding addressing that they will have adequate supply, but we know there is no infinite supply so,they must run out.
One thing that you did not mention is the erosion of social skills by a generation obsessed with ipads and other similar devices to the point of lacking human interaction. That is a whole other issue the world faces.