We've had systems where not everybody had to work to eat & make a living.
It was called monarchy, and you will notice it didn't go over well.
The problem is one in ten thousand still leaves a very disgruntled & disenfranchised 30,000 people in America slaving away so everyone else can do as they wish. And until we can automate all the dirty work, the hard laborious work, these aren't 30,000 people working white collar desk jobs.
Now, it's much easier to uphold that status quo than the old monarchies, because nearly 300 million people are pretty fond of the arrangement and can successfully keep the other 30,000 down. Maybe you realize that, and maybe you're ok with throwing 30,000 people under the bus "for the good of the country", but be upfront about that.
A major flaw within old monarchies was that the workers' jobs were essential and the bulk of their output went to the higher ups who merely watched over their work. The growing issue today is that people who are "lowly workers" are doing pointless jobs so that the higher ups whose primary purpose is to watch over workers doing nothing can justify paying those workers.
It is possible to distribute wealth and supplies without forcing someone to sit at a desk and fold paper airplanes for eight hours a day, five days a week.
Or, we will just reward those that do the dirty jobs MORE. I keep seeing this argument that if we didn't have to work we'd have no one to do the dirty jobs... Something tells me we'd be better off if we were in a system where those doing the dirty jobs weren't in poverty and they were doing them because they paid really well.
>The problem is one in ten thousand still leaves a very disgruntled & disenfranchised 30,000 people in America slaving away so everyone else can do as they wish.
Presumably those who were enabling the leisure of others would be reasonably economically rewarded. I think the idea is that you should ensure that everyone has their basic needs met, so that they can use their time solely on things that increase their quality of life in some way, not that you should force 1 in 10,000 people to work. If that means that some "necessary" jobs don't get done because they're so unpleasant that only people who need the money from them to survive would do them? Then that just puts even more pressure on automating them away, which is a net win for everyone, because those are /exactly/ the jobs that we should be automating away first.
I think that 1 in 10,000 might be a bit unrealistic at this point in time, but I think the level of automation in our society could easily be increased greatly... and probably will be. We've already started doing just that: a super easy example that comes to mind is automated checkout, which replaces 6-10 workers with one person making sure the checkout line is running and checking identification and the like. Even if the economy still more or less needs 1 in 10 people contributing, that enables 9 people to learn, make art, or just sleep all day. If whatever they're doing instead of the unnecessary job improves society? Then that's a net win, and presumably they would then receive economic benefits because of that. If it wasn't? Then they would still have a place to sleep, access to healthcare, enough food, etc.
Why would it be throwing 30k people under the bus? If you can support 300M people off of the work of 30k, you can give a damn good lifestyle to about 45k people who also happen to have to do shitty jobs.
If you set it up right, people would be trying to have the jobs.
It was called monarchy, and you will notice it didn't go over well.
The problem is one in ten thousand still leaves a very disgruntled & disenfranchised 30,000 people in America slaving away so everyone else can do as they wish. And until we can automate all the dirty work, the hard laborious work, these aren't 30,000 people working white collar desk jobs.
Now, it's much easier to uphold that status quo than the old monarchies, because nearly 300 million people are pretty fond of the arrangement and can successfully keep the other 30,000 down. Maybe you realize that, and maybe you're ok with throwing 30,000 people under the bus "for the good of the country", but be upfront about that.