if a lot of production is being done by robots where are they being wrong in that idea? isn't that what is coming anyways? tax the robots, feed the people, it all still gets done. those who don't want to work can do other things. that's how it has been for ever since the first cave dweller decided that they could get someone else to give them food if they told interesting stories or made up some religion or painted a picture on the wall of the cave...
Could go a lot of ways. Ideally, automation should eliminate not the need to do work, but the need to do work you don't want to do just to make enough money to stay alive. In other words a world where following your life's ambitions or inclinations does not ever need to be put aside for considerations of earning a steady enough income to make a living. I imagine that we might get a lot more artists, writers, inventors, researchers and so on if fewer people had to concern themselves with just making ends meet. Most people DO like to work, if the work is something they are fond of and are appreciated for.
Unfortunately, the far more likely outcome is that the rich and powerful will simply take advantage of automation to continually shrink the available job pool in the name of ever increasing profits for themselves. Ultimately, they only way a human can economically out compete a machine in a task is to be able to do it better than the machine, or cheaper than the machine, and, with the ever constant march of technology, both of those are only temporary things. The moment it becomes more cost effective to use a machine to do a job, those in control with turn the job over to a machine. Theoretically, governments can put a hold on this process legally (the same way they can put a stop to ever lower pay by having a minimum wage) but since we live in a world where the rich elite ALSO have a disproportionate amount of the political power, and can often more or less tell the government to do whatever they want them to do, such laws are probably not long to last (anymore than minimum wage will if the elite get any more power). Eventually, the only way for a person to be able to get work will be to agree to do more and more for less and less money, until we are basically back at a wage slave for food and shelter situation. And then even THAT will no longer be cost effective enough for those in power, and the masses will simply be left to starve to death. A lot of companies will then collapse (since, with no money, the populace will have no ability to BUY any of the products being produced.) But the true elite, the idle rich, probably won't care much, as they'll simply retire into a fantasy world of robots and machines catering to their every personal whim while they sit and do nothing.
The Worst part of this is that even a revolt might not necessarily stop this. By the time that people get so fed up they are willing to rise up and topple the system, conditions may have reached the point where we NEED those machines to make enough products to keep us all alive, it may literally be TOO MUCH for us to be able to handle on our own anymore. Luddism usually doesn't work long term, and trying to stop the march of technological advancement long term is pretty hard. Not to mention that, to the average person the option of starving to death while free is NOT necessarily better then being fed while being a slave. Freedom ISN'T worth their lives to many people (if it was, then any long term slavery system would crumble pretty quickly, as every slave would either revolt or commit suicide as soon as you got them). Freedom and dignity is a noble goal, but noble goals don't fill bellies or protect you from the rain.
