You're going to a high end coffee joint if you are telling the barista your problems while they are making your drink. Sure there will always be a market for dealing with real people, but there is also a market for getting your coffee fast and made correctly and I'm betting it's bigger.

To be fair, I don't understand why Starbucks is so popular so you may be right that Starbucks style baristas lose their jobs to automation. Then again, before Starbucks, barista wasnt even a career choice so it may be that if Starbucks goes the way of automation/ubiquity, a new form of coffee related profession becomes more prevalent.

As to my own coffee house preferences, its primarily a social experience for me. I don't tell the barista my problems but I like seeing a familiar face and having interaction. Ironically, the Italian coffee houses that Starbucks was inspired by followed this coffee as a social activity model but somehow Starbucks went through the American filter and became a place where people lined up for overpriced sugary drinks in to go cups.

someone will need to repair the machines - it's just far less labor intensive with one part time employee where there was previously a half dozen full time. some service oriented jobs will survive but plenty will fizzle and there wont be offsetting gains in other sectors. it will be pretty rough. it'll give people in the west a taste of what it's like to live in the developing world.

the enormous supply of workers competing for a relatively small number of jobs will guarantee not only that the equilibrium wages will hover right around the bare minimum to survive for entry level jobs, but also apply a downward pressure on the premium paid for jobs that require experience/education.

life in general is less expensive/better because of technological innovation which offsets the job losses to some extent, but at any given point in time, it's far better for poor people that there are fewer poor people being born.

Yes but the anthropomorphised character will not be the same machine that is making the drink/food/widget/whatever.

I don't have a reference on me but I'm pretty sure studies show that people don't gaf about automation making their stuff but they do care about it bringing them their stuff

That's why Japan/Korea/other countries have robots do everything except the final transaction

I doubt it would come to that. I'm not so wedded to my capitalism that if "most people become truly irrelevant for production," I'd doggedly hold onto the private ownership and/or control of the means of production. I'm probably not alone in that sentiment.

jfc

If/when robots can have a full human-like conversation, keep company as well or better than other humans and so on, i wouldn't focus too much on baristas losing their job.

Because if that happens at a cost that is low enough to provide those robots to random street corner bars, then society is going to change in such a massive way that agricultural and industrial revolutions would seem like linear progression in comparison.

In which case some kind of social singularity would be upon us and i think we can't predict at all what would happen in such a society.

Just please notice that aggregate employment went up while that job was automated.

What if they were born and raised in that city with everybody they know and love?

In italy a coffee costs 1 eur in most places (in some places in rural areas even less) and people talk about stuff with the barista all the times in cafès here.

They talk the recent soccer game, politics, family developments, the weather, local events, which shops opened which shops closed etc etc.

And other people at the cafè join the conversation if they want and so on and on. Some retirees spend their whole morning with 1-2 eurs at the cafè using it the way people use wifi at starbucks, only to relate to real human beings in their presence.

First starbucks in italy just opened (1 , extremely high-end , in milan).

There must be some real deep reason why starbucks didn't manage to enter succesfully the italian market before, with us being among the biggest coffee consumers (outside the house/office) in the world per person.

Then those loving people could take them home with themselves. And with the ubi they can provide to cover their marginal costs.

The wealth created by increases in productivity is mainly going to the masses. You don't see Bill Gates buying 10000 ninja blenders and hording them in a warehouse because he can. Those blenders get sold to Joe Six Pack. What is mostly going to the top is not the kind of wealth that makes people better off. What is going to the top is the wealth that controls the means of production/distribution.

Walmart is destroying the mom and pops while getting more stuff into the hands of poor people. The Waltons get more control, the masses get more goodies.

which is why we basically don't have coffee chains in italy

It won't be about what you or I want in that case, but what the handful of controllers of the eventual AGI decide, and nothing else would ever matter after that.

Because i don't see a scenario where most people become truly irrelevant for production (which means 0 or negative marginal added productivity in every single possible process) that doesn't include strong over-human-level artificial intelligence.

Btw i am not among those that think this is definitely going to be our future. Just saying that in case it happens its gg democracy.

Yes, that's the current dynamic going on.

But demand (the cash to buy those things) is still coming from the people, because they partecipate in production in massive numbers (=work), or they did in the past (=retirees) or are helped to do so by people who do (=welfare).

But when most people become truly irrelevant for production (if that happens) then the controllers of the tools of production don't need them anymore in any sense of the word. You have to hope they are good and decide to share. Because in that case they also have all the power (in the real sense, not in the sense the left currently describe people in power). You have to hope the gods want to share. GL with that.

lol amoeba was totally imagining Gigolo Joe

If you want an idea of how the masses might be treated, look at dictatorships in countries where the wealth is obtained/created by labor versus dictatorships where wealth/obtained by selling off natural resources.

Here is a hint, if you decide to move to a dictatorship and are not an elite, move to one with little natural resources. You will be treated better as the dictator needs your labor! So I agree there is some truth in what you wrote and you I think you can back it up with some real world evidence.

However I still think when production gets so good that stuff is basically free, you're not going to go without. The gods are not going to horde ninja blenders just because they can.

A gang of barista stuffed in a shack, got it.

We're not going to allow Dr. Evil to hold us hostage over something tantamount to our water supply. If technology starts threatening the essentials to life, whatever area it's operating in will be relegated to a public utility, like water, energy, etc.

Bold is problematic, because production being labor-free doesn't (necessarily) mean production is free.

The gods aren't going to horde "ninja blenders", but they are not going to produce them at all if cost is still there (unless they are good, GL with that). And it will be, because being labour-free isn't the same as solving all resource scarcity. Energy and materials would still be needed for a long time, until the AI develops limitless free energy sources, harvesting of asteroids and so on.

You could have like 100+ years (or 300 or whatever) with labor-free (or "almost" labour free) tech available, without scarcity being solved.

Think about it in this way: the moment it's cheaper to annihilate all irrelevant humans instead of keep producing stuff for them... what do you think cynical gods would do?

Do you think the gods would divert many resources away from (for ex) researching immortality for themselves, or harvesting practical-infinite energy, in order to keep fed , healthy and happy billions of humans?

What would you do?

If we reach the point where general, strong, better than human AI exists, all the decisions would be taken by those who control that AI, in the pratictal sense, because they will control all real power.

And the AI will strategize better than the best human, so who knows wether it will choose to go through social manipulation of opinion, violent force, silent assassination through invisible minidrones of all the opposition leaders, planting of fake evidence to jail oppositors etc etc etc.

Imagine the most intelligent person in the world being ridiculed in every dynamic and outplayed constantly, by somebody who never sleeps, and you maybe get the picture.

Wether such an AI could be "controllable" by the creators or not is yet another topic but i dont think for the masses it would make any difference at all.

In the end the AI controllers (or the AI themselves) will win every battle (wether on the ground , or of the mind) and determine everything that happens in human society.

This , i repeat, in the (imo) remote case of strong AGI being developed.

Then there are many other scenarios with different, less totalizing tech and we can talk about them if you want.

Imagine you are one of the gods and are pondering annihilating all irrelevant humans. You decide irrelevant humans would rebel and there is some chance X that they will succeed and chop off your head.

How low does X have to be before you deem it safe enough to implement your annihilation plan? You see its not just about the cost of production.