2/26/17 What Is The Point Of An Automated World?

    I know I am probably on the wrong side of this debate, but how could automating most jobs be good for humans?  I understand robots already are heavily involved in making the goods we consume, but as I understand it, the robots are not autonomous.  What we call robots nowadays are just theoretical pieces of "robots" as compared to what we see in the movies, like Star Wars.
    Since I started working in AMD, back in 1995, we have had robot arms to move product into and out of tools, sometimes because the wafers are going into hot furnaces, sometimes because the process needs to be repeated hundreds of times and the wafers (round silicon discs composed of chips, look like old fashion records) cannot be scratched by clumsy human hands.  Every generation of newer fab gets more automated, and as I had last heard, the latest fabs (fabrication plants) were going to have few "operators", but because everything is automated, a crew of maintenance experts will always be needed.  Preventative Maintenance, or PMs, are done regularly to keep the robot arms moving, the tools, be they etchers, or implanters or whatever new and wonderful technology is created will always need human interaction regularly.  These robots aren't climbing off the assembly line like battle soldiers and looking for their own parts to heal themselves.  If they break or become misaligned, generally they just stop working.
    Anyways, people will always be needed, in that capacity.  Maybe the easy "blue collar" positions mostly disappear, but I don't believe factories can be all automated.  The more robots, the more breakdowns.  The more breakdowns, the more maintenance type people required.
    The article then states that a universal salary will be needed to feed and keep the people from turning on themselves.  That is a pretty stupid thing to do.  I know I was just complaining a couple of blogs ago about wanting time off, but that is more of a vacation.  If I was home all the time, what would that be like?  I would sleep until I got bored of doing that, I assume kids would still go to school, but what for if there are no jobs to be trained for.  There would be a population explosion without some sort of birth control in the air or the water.  I imagine the hours of partying would slowly extend and without time commitments during the day, why would people stop and go home.  This just screams end of humanity to me.
    We would have no choice but to keep pushing our human need to grow and explore and move off to new worlds, maybe with a cadre of experts and the right robots, we could start inhabiting Mars and so on and so forth.  Humans were not designed to just sit around and collect a check.  I see people that live like that and they are not alpha humans.  Leaders and curious people have no choice but to keep pushing the limits of man.
    Elon Musk and those type of people are very smart, but they are underestimating the potential of man and his abilities.  The beta test in Africa being conducted now will show most of that money squandered either to whores or gambling.  I'm not saying that because they are Africans, but they are used to nothing, what is $22 a month going to do in a community with one water well and no grocery stores?  HEB isn't going to pop up overnight over there.