Originally Posted by Relentless

I hate to be the one to break this important news to you... YOU aren't the average person. If 50% of people are unemployed, you would still be likely to find a job somewhere... as would I and most of the people in this conversation. That doesn't change the fact that an increasingly large number of people will become unemployed, it only means you aren't one of them. When 10% of the people are unemployed we deal with it by incarcerating many of them, having a small rash of homeless people, and some welfare recipients. When 50% of the people are unemployed that becomes an insufficient method of dealing with the problem - whether you personally are employed or not.

Pick any profession.... and it is subject to automation. Doctors, Lawyers, software developers, financiers, hair dressers, farm workers, pornstars... pick any profession you like and intelligent people can find ways to get the job done with less workers, cheaper workers, or eventually 0 workers. The only thing that can not be automated (yet) is innovation. So far only humans can come up with good ideas... and only a small number of humans have that ability on a marketable scale. As we move forward the pace of automation accelerates and the amount of man hours needed decreases while production increases. Eventually you have more production than you need with less man hours required than ever before - displacing many people (eventually a majority of people) and what we do with them will be a very important decision.