Imagine that twenty years from now, Australia has managed its energy problems through adoption of renewables and battery-storage technology. Improved artificial intelligence and low electricity costs have rendered non-human labour cheap and effective. It no longer makes sense to pay humans to perform a range of manual, repetitive tasks.
A consequence of these developments would be rising un- and under-employment. And as a society we would have a choice: to allow the gains from automation to flow largely to the owners of technology, entrenching inequality and creating a resurgent capital class; or to arrange for all people to share in […]
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