Jobs were the secret sauce that made capitalism work. If your neighbor was wildly successful, there would be some modicum of trickle-down that would benefit the community. Now that success and job creation are almost entirely decoupled, the world is looking a lot more like the private enclaves of Snow Crash. I'm not sure how capitalism stays socially progressive in the global banana republic of the future. The post-scarcity crowd talks about the better life everyone will have, but I suspect the reality is that the ultra wealthy will have little to no reason to support others when most jobs are automated. Some claim that they will require someone to buy their products (a la Ford), but really that's only for the economically mobile. The established money will be able to live on their 10,000 acres with enough toys to think they're living life, while the newly urbanized global population fights for a couple dozen square feet to call home. It doesn't seem pretty to me.
>Jobs were the secret sauce that made capitalism work
Based on what I have read and seen, I would say that a scarcity of workers was what made capitalism work so well for so many in the US up through the 70s. [1]
Don't you imagine that the 99%, instead of fighting each other over a couple dozen square feet would simply go kill these established money people and take what they had?
That's a great question, possibly the defining question, and I think the answer is a resounding "No". Humans seem to rarely buck the system, so it's much easier to deal with the occasional seed individual before the problem becomes systemic. And "deal" doesn't mean remove, as it's pretty easy to destabilize revolt when you have the right information. And boy do we have access to lots of information.
Plus, how would a revolution change anything? The newly powerful would behave the same way the old guard did.
