Oldie but goodie. A piece of fiction describing how a computer system can do the job of human managers at fast food restaurants (scarily plausible), how this leads to a dystopia (slowly getting implausible), and how to avoid this scenario and reach utopia (give me a break).
The usual problem with the unemployed humans is where the money to support them comes from. The usual answer is taxation of the robot companies. For that to work very well, there had better not be too many tax havens - and there had better not be too much of a "race to the botttom" between governments to host (and tax) the companies. These requirements seem moderately taxing.
Feeding unemployed humans is the government's problem in my country - and in many other countries with a welfare state. The more unemployed humans there are, the more likely they are to vote for a welfare state.
Yes, but that's only a problem in that you have to tax rich people to get their money to distribute it. My first reply was therefore "the government will tax the rich to feed the poor, what else could they do?".
But after a bit of thought, I realised that if the government owns self replicating slave robots and land, then it can use the slaves to create food without needing to tax anyone. The robots can't be taxed because their earnings go to their owners,... (read more)