How can civilization cope with the fact that those jobs might never come back?
A cognitive surplus [1] can be dumped into projects like Wikipedia, but where does the physical surplus go? Supposing we are omnipotent deities who want to make people happy and free and avoid unrest.
Encourage people to build henges and pyramids for the hell of it?
We can't pay them to do that without a global welfare system... Russia would just race us to the bottom.
Strap a GPS on their back and have the surplus go to OpenSteetMap. Or give them a bin bag and have them clean their environment. Or fix bicycles. Or volunteer.
I have a lot of time on my hands, and I always find ways to use it. However I suspect that most modern men don't enjoy such a privilege. They're just as busy as they ever were.
A cognitive surplus [1] can be dumped into projects like Wikipedia, but where does the physical surplus go? Supposing we are omnipotent deities who want to make people happy and free and avoid unrest.
Encourage people to build henges and pyramids for the hell of it?
We can't pay them to do that without a global welfare system... Russia would just race us to the bottom.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Surplus