Quote from: MuffinMaster on March 26, 2014, 09:18:30 PM

You're getting into the massive increase in productivity with the subsequent massive decrease in wages compared to economic output. If wages has maintained their ratio to productivity then we would all be making very livable wages just like our parents and grandparents.

If we all were making liveable wages for the past 20 years, then its likely crypto may have never been created.

Read this. Enlightening.
http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
(tl;dr: most of our job are useless but we are trapped in a mental system where you are supposed to work, even it it is not necessary)

I call this the labor transition, for similarities with the demographic transition.
natality => job demand
mortality => job offer
population growth => unemployment

Phase 1: full employment
Phase 2: growing unemployment, crisis, desperation.
Phase 3: seeing the light at the end of the tunnel; solution envisionned (Oscar Wilde's slavery of the machines; we may move to a situation similar to US antebellum, but without the ethical issues; other solution is basic income, yet another is lowering the barriers to entry -- MOOC, crowdfunding, 3D printing, open source)
Phase 4: we found a way to live in a "post-work" society and we are finally fine with it

We presently are between phase 2 and phase 3.

Here is the illustration (French but should be easy to understand - "chômage" means "unemployment")

And the article in English that a workmate wrote then translated after I encouraged him to extrapolate on my theory:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/roux20140314