I never got a response from you. I asked what is wrong with robots largely taking over production/manufacturing and humans moving into more service-related jobs.

You mentioned tractors earlier and tractors take jobs from people. I can't tell if you're trying to eliminate technology or not.

I asked what is wrong with robots largely taking over production/manufacturing and humans moving into more service-related jobs. — BitconnectCarlos

I did try to explain. There is nothing 'wrong' with any arrangement you might suggest, except that it does not accord with economics. Adam serves Eve in some way to earn money, and Eve serves Adam. Meanwhile the robots do the farming and mining and building and so on. A nice picture. Except what do Adam and Eve do with the money they earn, apart from pass it back and forth between them? The robots have no use for it, they just produce stuff and pass it around. There's no economy.

Unless all the robots belong to Simon the serpent, and he collects the money from Adam and Eve in return for his robot produce, and Adam and Eve serve him, to earn money. But Simon the serpent might need a few dozen servants for delights that the robots cannot totally fulfil to his satisfaction, but not millions, or billions. Again, there's no economy.

And if there are 100 Simons or 10,000, they have nothing to speak of for each other, and likewise no use for the millions.

A nice picture. Except what do Adam and Eve do with the money they earn, apart from pass it back and forth between them? The robots have no use for it, they just produce stuff and pass it around. There's no economy.

They could invest that money, loan it out, start a business with it, save it, gamble it, etc. there's a billion things they could do with that money and it would still be an economy.

Machines do need things by the way.

They could invest that money, loan it out, start a business with it, save it, gamble it, etc. there's a billion things they could do with that money and it would still be an economy. — BitconnectCarlos

Sure, they could paper the walls with it. But it wouldn't be an economy, because no one cares what they do. You imagine everything will continue as a normal economy, but it won't, and you need to explain, in this brave new world what investment even means, what property means, what a loan means. Clearly you do not understand and cannot conceive that this whole money structure can fail, I cannot explain it any better, sorry.

I think in the very long term that’s probably correct, but in the shorter term that would come about through the ways I already listed. My scenario 4 basically is the rich/poor division going away on its own, and as already described I foresee 2 transitioning to 3 and 3 to 4 over time, plus I can also see a direct 2 to 4 transition as even a few generous rich people give automatons to the poor who then give them to other poor until everyone’s rich, and even in scenario 1, the worst of them all, after the carnage all the survivors will be rich so there will be no division going forward from there either.

So basically in the end there will be a world of everyone living happily in fully automated luxury space communism one way or another, the question is only who gets to survive to see it and how painful is the transition from here to there.

Invest it in or loan it to people starting businesses doing what? Manually doing all the things the robots are already doing, bringing us back to a pre-robot economy?

The point is that if the robots produce all the food and other basic necessities, and need nothing from the humans, and don’t just serve the humans all equally but only serve some minority of humans who barely need anything from other humans because they have robots to do everything, then what are all of the other humans going to trade to the robots (or their owners) to get that food and other necessities? One trillionaire’s entertainment budget isn’t going to keep a billion YouTubers gainfully employed.

If robot ownership is widely distributed there’s no problem, so this isn’t an argument against automation, but against concentrated ownership of the automatons. And yes, the existing concentration of ownership of existing automatons (and other less advanced means of production) is already causing a less severe version of the same problem. Total automation is just the most severe case that most highlights the problems of capitalism.

Invest it in or loan it to people starting businesses doing what?

If the machines are doing "the essentials" and humans are doing services there's still room to innovate with services. You could invest in a business related to facilitating services.

[Robots] need nothing from the humans,

This is a contentious point. Now, I'm not a mechanic or a physicist.... but every robot I've come across needs things. There could certainly be some kind of machine-to-machine economy where humans could find their own niche; I think the whole idea of a machine-to-machine economy was the idea for IOTA which is a cryptocurrency but maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here. If humans are doing services I don't see why a robot couldn't pay for a cleaning.

then what are all of the other humans going to trade to the robots (or their owners) to get that food and other necessities?

They could trade with each other or provide upkeep or improvements to the machines. Maybe they could trade with the machines too.

If robot ownership is widely distributed there’s no problem, so this isn’t an argument against automation, but against concentrated ownership of the automatons.

I'm somewhat sympathetic with you here; if a billionaire or a government owns all of the robot super-soldiers we have a serious problem. Additionally, if AI gains some kind of self-consciousness we also have a potentially huge problem on our hands. I guess I'll agree with you here insofar as I'm against monopolies.

There's a Genius, Sustainable Economic System We Could All Be Using. Here's How

Our current landfills will become mines of resources to be recycled, creating a circular economy, as soon as it is easier to extract those resources from garbage than from where we currently get them. That can happen either by inventing new technologies that make recycling easier, or else by default it will happen when easier-to-get resources become prohibitively scarce.

Our current landfills will become mines of resources to be recycled, creating a circular economy, as soon as it is easier to extract those resources from garbage than from where we currently get them. — Pfhorrest

True.

Don't send your daughter down the mine Mrs Worthington. Especially in her best dress freshly cleaned and ironed.

But this does not answer either, really. The efficient way to space travel is with minimum population and genetic diversity in storage. Even when the economy is identical with entropy, robots are more efficient than humans.

For 10,000 years or so, our poor old brains have been working and working to make life easier - the wheel to save carrying and dragging stuff, roads to make wheeling easier, cooking to save chewing so much, the blender to save chewing at all. — unenlightened

Blending food is stupid; we evolved to eat fruit and veg - not to drink it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing