There is plenty of documentation of the willingness of those in power to use the resources as Peter has described (for their own self interest) to destabilize those who do not understand their greed.

A poorly understood program was put in place after WWII to move people from farms to cities, “The Adaptive Program for Agriculture”, that was so successful that it was taken globally by John Perkins. The perfidy of these powerful interests is described by Naomi Klein in her book, “The Shock Doctrine”.

Those who own the automation control the wealth they create and are reluctant to release it. We must be very wary of this trend. Thank you, Peter.

At least a manual truck driver is engaged, the robot truck leaves the driver sipping tea in the background…how boring… how scary.. Trucks mostly shift imported goods. Goods are imported because entrepreneurs chase cheaper costs by going to populous poor countries. The adulation of cheap price, catering to our selfish gene, the real cause of all social harm, becomes a race to the bottom where everyone looks for a competitive edge, a means to undercut another producer. Local industry gets dismantled and a dependence on far away goods is created..weird.

For awhile there was an idea of fair not cheap pricing.Thereby the legitimate dignified needs of all players in the productive process were considered. Governments even stepped in with tariffs so that local manufacturers weren’t undercut unfairly by overseas producers who exploited the poor in other countries.

One could wonder if competition should exist at all in the economic sector. Perhaps that activity should be cooperartive.(an ideal). Then all people would work with a common goal of feeding clothing and housing all people who live within a particular country. ( old idea …fraternity or sisterhood). Thinkers can compete for higher levels of truth because that activity does not directly threaten daily life. Governments representing the heart should ideally mediate assuring that equal rights and responsibilties are vouchsafed for all. That way the whole human being’s needs are addressed….head….heart and body.

A repetition of the same old socially harmful mentality with some robots tossed on top would just make present mattters worse. My neighbor is an eighty year old bricky. He built a new brick shed in a few weeks a couple of years ago….buggered knees but strong back, good wit and free…because of his skill…….cheers Peter

Methinks that more clever machines and robots will bring suffering to humanity until a bigger issue is resolved ie separating income from work done.. eg some kind of social wage.as a share of the income the machine earns needs to accompany robot advances.

At the moment clever people and business owners use machines to accrue more wealth for themselves and the once employed workers become stressed beggars and social outcasts, a condition not conducive to higher thinking. The advocates of the industrial revolution enthused about an increase in creative too leisure too but the link between workplace and income was never resolved and so we are where we are…with unnecessary dubious debt crippling every one and higher thinking being replaced by survival worries.

cheers…….Peter