So to answer your question, "we" are the "we the people," the ones who will have to adapt to a society in which robots have displaced millions of workers from a huge variety of jobs.
Should be, “*Who has smart-drones and bomb-defusing robots already in use?”
You can’t predict the future. A 5 mile meteor could strike the Earth next week and that could send people back to the stone age with a 100 or so humans alive.
So what do you propose “we” do now? or what does an individual do to prepare for this?
My curiosity asks, who wants to do the jobs robots do? The production of a product at today’s pace is mind numbing and the levels some of these production lines are running, with robotics involved in the assembly, puts at risk the health of human element. Some of these plants run 12 hour shifts, causing a huge physical toll with human beings competing with advanced automation at the edge of their physical capability.
Blacksmiths and wagon wheel makers hardest hit.
As the proprietor of a design and development firm, if the stupid fools want the $15/hr minimum wage, let them suffer from it like the idiots are finding out in Seattle. They are now asking for a reduction in pay or hours so they can, again, qualify for government subsidies, aka WELFARE.
The real driver for all of this is the dying unions. They base their union wages on the minimum wage because the politicians gave them the laws they wanted to be able to do it.
As for my firm, bring it on, we are busier than we have ever been with all sorts of automated design projects and a lot more from where they are coming from. But, because of the diversity of industries and commercial products we are involved in, we could do just fine without it.
I am just so tired of the whining that I no longer give a hoot what their problem is because they are their own worst enemy, period.
The In-and Out burger scenario mentioned earlier only works for so long. It is funny that even McDonalds tried it for a while. The problem is that they run out of people willing to work their entire lives shoveling burgers. The natural human condition is to better one’s self, but for the most part, that only applies to people who were raised to be independent.