The whole point of the industrial revolution was more leisure time and better use of resources, right? Well that didn’t work very fucking well did it? Rather than enjoying abundance and sharing the work around we just have more unemployed people.

This is about to get much worse. Much, much worse. One word for you: robots.

Yep, robots gun tukk arrr jobs. Well, most of them. And trust me this is going to happen. If you don’t think so you haven’t been paying attention, which is fair enough because you’ve been busy – because you’ve been failed by the industrial revolution.

Now we could, I have no doubt, think of more things for ourselves to do, create jobs which don’t really need doing, and continue the race to be more competitive than the next man.

Or we could say “Hot damn! We’ve arrived! WE. ARE. CLEVER! High five everyone!! Now how about we all enjoy the fruits of these labours and work out how to live peaceably with this abundance? For, look, we have EVERYTHING! The future is here! We have arrived, this is what we were aiming for and this is it!”

And someone will say, “yes, but what we will do about money?”

And you will turn around and say, “Basic fucking income, bro! We all get issued money, enough to just about live on, and so only that which needs doing gets done!”

Which is, of course, a fucking brilliant idea and already used in Norway and Alaska to name but two.

There’s an EU petition afoot to do as little social experiment on how feasible this is, so would you sign up?