Look at all the people making and selling hats for TF2 or gun skins or whatever. Valve already started the idea of creating value from its software users - creating an entire economy. People get the tools and game for free and only have to invest their time to make money. Epic is doing something similar with Unreal Tournament. Making it open source and creating a marketplace to sell your own games/modifications. There are a lot of examples like this.
Who knows how pervasive that kind of system will become. Will it apply to other industries/mediums? Could Reddit or Hacker News find a way to pay individuals for well regarded content? There are some possibilities here.
But I wonder if that kind of system can really support that many people. Most of the content created sucks, right? Then only a really small number would actually be successful. Maybe you'd have to incentivize sorting through content to find the good stuff a la Steam Greenlight (and find a way to pay users for their work).
Anyways, I'm sure people will find something to do. Even if it's just being paid a basic income for nothing in return. I think peoples' standards of living have been improved by technology (nukes and what not notwithstanding). Why expect that trend to stop now? It's just that, from our relatively medieval point of view, it's hard to imagine what that world will look like so we're naturally scared of it. That's also not to suggest that there won't be serious growing pains while we all collectively try to figure this new world out.
Its unlikely that would be enough to offset the scale of disruption that will be occurring with automation. With ever creative or content industry we have so far (wether it will be with actors, app stores, youtube celebrities) a similar pattern always emerges.
At the top, you have often less than 1% becoming wildly successful, making hundreds of thousands to millions each year.
Below that you have maybe 5-10% who are able to make a living at it, but will not pull any spectacular numbers.
After that, you have everyone else. These are people who's apps are rarely downloaded, who have less than a few thousand views on any video they put up, or actors who are out of work most of the time. These section may pull in some revenue, but not enough to survive on. At best its a side job, at least until their main job goes away.
At the core of all this, is that we don't have enough time to consume all the media that is produced. We often end up letting other curate the content that we consume. Whether it be media companies or friends and family. But it tends to create self reinforcing cycles, driving more attention to the hits and less to everything else.
This is a power law distribution, and it's very common in human-created (artificial) measurements. It's difficult to avoid this situation without introducing unforeseen consequences.
Who knows how pervasive that kind of system will become. Will it apply to other industries/mediums? Could Reddit or Hacker News find a way to pay individuals for well regarded content? There are some possibilities here.
But I wonder if that kind of system can really support that many people. Most of the content created sucks, right? Then only a really small number would actually be successful. Maybe you'd have to incentivize sorting through content to find the good stuff a la Steam Greenlight (and find a way to pay users for their work).
Anyways, I'm sure people will find something to do. Even if it's just being paid a basic income for nothing in return. I think peoples' standards of living have been improved by technology (nukes and what not notwithstanding). Why expect that trend to stop now? It's just that, from our relatively medieval point of view, it's hard to imagine what that world will look like so we're naturally scared of it. That's also not to suggest that there won't be serious growing pains while we all collectively try to figure this new world out.