Professor Roubini's insights are certainly right on target. In thinking through the social challenges of robotics, one is reminded of Spock's line to Captain Kirk in the Nomad episode o the original Star Trek series (apparently it is only in science fiction that these futuristic beasties can still be outsmarted), "Your logic was impeccable Captain, we are in grave danger." As we can't transport our robots into deep space before destroying the fabric socio-economic, we had best revamp the weave of that fabric.



For the simple reality is that the mythology that we can cure matter by training all the unemployed for theoretical nitch jobs corresponds to an earlier myth that companies have solved the problems of their unemployed workers by providing one or two thousand dollars to train them in nonexistent environmental maintenance jobs. The only way that such could really happen is to boost production to far greater levels of unnecessary, wasteful production and services than we already do—speeding up environment, resource and further upcoming “minor” challenges. – In short, these “cures” are worse than the disease.



However, picture the Ferguson related riots (not justifying this at all, but…), Occupy Wall Street, etc.—and multiply that 1,000 times (at least). Recall that it was unemployment—particular of the white collar and technical kind—that spurred the tragicomedy of the Arab Spring. [Democracy would have been “nice,” but was no more the cause than it was for “women’s rights” being the reason the US went into Afghanistan (as opposed to say, Saudi Arabia).]



The reality is that entrepreneurs must be, by change of societal value, brought into the psychology of the very crowd-sourcing methods that they presently employ. That is, where people are willing to provide expertise, research or ideas to a company merely for online prestige or minimal symbolic awards.



At present, the entrepreneur is motivated by wealth in money, objects and power far beyond any practical need or desire for creature comforts or security. The reason is the psychological value of these—a sense of self-worth, prestige. For example, two paintings, an original by a master and a duplicate whose difference takes a special expertise to detect. Yet on that undetectable expert say-so , lies the sole difference between a painting worth one million dollars, or one hundred. This psychology can be transferred under the right societal influence to the honor and acclaim connected with communal contribution—actually a lot stronger than the present “cheap” motivations of crowd-sourcing.



Given the motivations of the upcoming catastrophe to use the available psychological tools of the consumerist mass media (as presently used on small scale by mutual help recovery societies as Alcoholics Anonymous), we can work our way to an altruistic society—the “4th leg” of evolution in natural communities. The last piece of the puzzle is to become not a “welfare” state, but a “scholarship” state, paying a minimal but respectable stipend for the study of integral education to create a society of professionals in its own positive evolution.



Does this sound like a return to Communism? No, because Communism in essence, suffered the same crippling problem that is now rapidly calcifying Capitalism. This being the mishandling of human ego which is always the fly-in-the-ointment of basic human relationships and ergo, the economics built up thereof. We do not put the commissar’s gun to the ego’s head, nor count on free enterprise’s simplistic black box model of its own internal motivations. Rather we buy-in the ego with the reality of the situation, work with it intellectually on the behavioral-economics methodology, and apply that psychological method that addresses the Freudian id of the ego in its own emotional/behavioral terms. As well, the key is slow and steady system evolution—not egoistic revolution in a new concentration of power and self-interest.



Beyond all said, the advantages of an altruistic collaborative society over a cut-throat competitive one are paramount. This due to elimination of harmful, useless “snake oil” products, needless duplication, wasteful packaging, designed obsolescence, and the waste of needless “sales-talk” advertising, legal and policing efforts.