[Locke]

Originally Posted by jammies

Iggy_oi, you are proposing industrial solutions to post-industrial problems. This isn't the 1930s.

Economic growth is based on technology now, as even resource extraction, which you'd expect to be a throwback to simpler times, is mostly made profitable (and sometimes only possible) by high-tech machinery, automation, and computing. There will always be jobs for technicians, bureaucrats, and entertainers, but outside of those, it's going to get much worse.

If we're very lucky, we'll end up with a post-scarcity society once technology advances sufficiently and elites are made irrelevant. If we're unlucky, the underclass will decide they can't wait that long, and there will be upheaval and revolutions that will make the socialist revolutions of the 1848 to 1949 era seem like rehearsals before the main show.

Successful government that will enable the better and much less likely future will be based on what might cynically be called appeasement, and kindly called empowerment. As long as enough people benefit, or think they benefit, from a society, it will endure. However, if enough idiots cry "Don't tax *my* money!" or "Let's build walls around our communities!" or "Smash the machines that take our jobs!" or "The rich are what's wrong with society!", then it will all fall apart, and quickly.

"Yes....I'd like a combo #3."