The idea being criticised is that - if a few humans dominate the economy by commanding huge armies of robot minions, then - without substantial taxation - the economy will grind to a halt - since hardly any humans are earning any money, and so therefore hardly any humans are spending any money.
The problem with that is that the huge armies of robot minions are consuming vast quantities of material while competing with each other for resources - and the purchase of all those goods is not being accounted for anywhere in the model - apparently because of the ideas that only humans are consumers and most humans are unemployed .
It seems like a fairly straightforwards modelling mistake to me. The purchase of robot fuel and supplies has GOT to be accounted for. Account for it as mega-spending by the human managing director if you really must - but account for it somewhere. As soon as you do that, the whole idea that increassed automation leads to financial meltdown vanishes like a mirage.
We already have a pretty clear idea about the effect of automation on the economy - from Japan and South Korea. The machines do a load of work, and their bodies need feeding - creating demand for raw materials and fuel - and the economy is boosted.
How does needing raw materials create employment for the rest of the population? If everything is mechanized, then raw materials come from those who own mines/wells, and the extraction is done by robot labor. That doesn't involve very many people.
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.