I have to say I'm still missing the means by which the surplus of goods and services is transferred to people who are no longer needed. To be sure, in the long run labor-saving devices have increased the surplus of available goods, but each generation of workers which has its skills obsoleted by machines seems to undergo a permanent drop in standard of living; even very early automation had massive deletorious social effects.
Minimaxing the standard of living does not automatically flow forth from technological process; at best, it takes careful planning.
but each generation of workers which has its skills obsoleted by machines seems to undergo a permanent drop in standard of living
Permanent drop in standards of living sounds implausible. Maybe a permanent relative drop. What evidence do you have for this?
The question that the ideas are supposed to be in response to is:
Here are links to some proposed ideas that you should vote for, assuming you agree with them. You do have to register to vote, but the email confirmation arrives right away and it shouldn't take much more than two minutes of your time altogether. Why should you do this? The top voted ideas from this request for ideas will be seen by some of the top policy recommendation makers in the USA. They probably won't do anything like immediately convene a presidential panel on AGI, but we are letting them know that these things are really important.
Research the primary cause of degenerative diseases: aging / biological senescence
Explore proposals for sustaining the economy despite ubiquitous automation
Establish a Permanent Panel or Program to Address Global Catastrophic Risks, Including AGI
Does anyone have any other ideas? Feel free to submit them directly to ideascale, but it may be a better idea to first post them in the comments of this post for discussion.