Arguably, we are long past that point, as seen from Marx’ perspective of the 18th century: the entire economy of his time, i. e. agriculture and industrial manufacturing, covering the essentials of life, is today easily accomplished by about 3% of people working in agriculture, and probably a similar number in manufacturing.
But so far, we have chosen (and also accomplished) to reinvest capacities that were freed by automation into increased consumption instead of less work.
Considering the decreasing marginal utility of increased consumption (your first $1000/mo keep you alive, the tenth $1000 are wasted on a jet ski you will use twice), at some point working less should become the preferred option.
Alternatively, we might run out of the opportunity to choose work. This is what people mean when they mention competition by machines and AI. When driving and accounting and phone centers and retail are all automated, will we, yet again, come up with meaningful roles that are accessible to most everyone, but cannot be performed by such technology?
> When driving and accounting and phone centers and retail are all automated, will we, yet again, come up with meaningful roles that are accessible to most everyone, but cannot be performed by such technology?
There's at least some evidence for it, I think. The more time people have (because of less work, primarily), the more they need entertainment, it appears, so we're automating away time consuming labor and adding jobs helping the population kill the time that has been freed.
My impression is that we're far away from anything that comes even close to full automation. Of course, from an 18th century standpoint, we're there and then some, but then again, from an 5th century standpoint, we've been there many times over, I suppose.
Arguably, we are long past that point, as seen from Marx’ perspective of the 18th century: the entire economy of his time, i. e. agriculture and industrial manufacturing, covering the essentials of life, is today easily accomplished by about 3% of people working in agriculture, and probably a similar number in manufacturing.
But so far, we have chosen (and also accomplished) to reinvest capacities that were freed by automation into increased consumption instead of less work.
Considering the decreasing marginal utility of increased consumption (your first $1000/mo keep you alive, the tenth $1000 are wasted on a jet ski you will use twice), at some point working less should become the preferred option.
Alternatively, we might run out of the opportunity to choose work. This is what people mean when they mention competition by machines and AI. When driving and accounting and phone centers and retail are all automated, will we, yet again, come up with meaningful roles that are accessible to most everyone, but cannot be performed by such technology?