I've already answered your question: creative jobs (including design and programming) will be most resistant to automation, but these jobs will be limited both by demand (only so many designers will be needed) and supply (most people do not have the ability to design automated production systems). Therefore, only a few such jobs (relative to the population as a whole) will exist. As for repair: Machnes generally need repair only as a result of bad engineering (kludges, needlessly complex systems, legacy holdovers in design), physical damage (environmental damage, misusem sabotage, disasters) or poor workmanship (human error). As technology advances, the design of these automated factory robots will advance, eliminating kludgy single-function designs in favor of all-purpose "assemblers" with modular, swap-out subsystems. Once machines are building machines, poor workmanship will cease to be a factor; and, since these modular assemblers will work 24-hour, 7-day weeks in sealed, climate controlled environments, moisture and heat conditions can be tailored to fit the optimum for the machines, instead of the comfort and convenience of human operators, reducing the possibility of enivironmental damage to the assemblers. With no people in the production loop, factories will become sealed units: recycled raw material feedstocks will be introduced at one end, finished goods will emerge from the other. With the possibility of human damage from misuse and sabotage reduced to zero, these "magic mills" could eliminate the entire concept of factory labor in capital-rich markets; the only "jobs" created would be high-end design and programming jobs (such repairs as would be needed could be handled by low-wage, unskilled labor; the assemblers would shut down long enough for a human or robot to enter the mill, swap out the malfunctioning module, and leave). In capital-poor markets, these "magic mills" would be replaced by sweatshops, with no-wahe prison labor substituting for the assembler robots.
Given the way technology and markets are progressing, I honestly cannot imagine what the world economy will be like in fifty years' time. Since machines can manufacture finished goods better, faster, and more cheaply than can any human workforce (except for slave labor), and since there are only so many high-end, automation-proof "creative" jobs to go around, I simply cannot imagine what the Average Joe is going to do for a living in the year 2052. Maybe the problem isn't the march of progress; perhaps it's my limited imagination.
In any case, thank God I'm a professional artist. There are some things only a human being can do.
thank God I'm a professional artist. There are some things only a human being can do... If as you predict there will be no work for the average joe, who then will buy your work?
I digress however...
Your argument is really circular I believe. If everything is to be automated and relatively few have a job, for whom then are all these goods being manufactured? Again, supply and demand - if there is no demand, there is no reason to produce.
The beauty of capitalism is that SUCCESSFUL entrepreneurs only produce a product they can sell. I believe the flaw in your logic is seeing the world as a "static pie", when in reality the pie keeps getting bigger and bigger. A visionary doesn't see 1 billion Chinese as "too many mouths to feed", but rather sees the opportunity of an immense marketplace.
The problem we in the west face is not too many workers with nothing to do - just the opposite - we are having to import our work force from the "developing" world.
Capitalism = balance (eventually :-)
Regards,