As we consider the budding robot revolution of autonomous robots and autonomous systems of smart interconnected robots we are staring an anomaly in human economic history directly in the face, chronic pathologically excess productivity.
There have always been bubbles where supply exceeds demand which are corrected at some social cost by downturns in economic activity and, as Schumpeter noted, retrenchment by a process of innovation and creative destruction into more powerful economic engines.
This process has brought us to the verge of the autonomous machine economy where human participation in the productive process is minimal. That is pathological. It will lead absolutely to demand insufficiency and economic collapse unless there are corrective measures taken within the capitalist model to capture this pathologically excess productivity and transfer it to human consumption agents in order for the economy to survive. Without such a transfer there will be nobody to buy what the robots produce.
It is not a matter of moral outrage but curing a pathological condition. Either we capture this robot productivity in a neutral fashion, such as per robot hour licensing fees and protective tariffs and translate it into human purchasing power by some sort of UBI or the economy, all automated economies, will grind to a halt from demand insufficiency. It is not a workable future.
Do Well and Be Well
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