There is a little bit of an assumption of the mad scientist here. Most scientists and engineers are very compassionate and caring people, even if many are excentric. We care about a thriving humanities department.
The psychopath cohort you're thinking of is the executive branch, or the people who made it to sales manager.
Nah, it's all about the money. It's literally just trolling with people lives to make money off of their inevitable fear
The only way to win, is if people who have invested money aren't afraid of losing it. Which of course almost nobody, because when gambling the house almost always wins. Which is to say an increasingly small minority get to win the lottery of a financially free life.
I'd prefer things end without violence... Which puts me in the most impossible timeline there is. It's so frustrating realizing they're all literally stupid or manipulated by stupid. Stupid being the promise of wealth, power, and fame ironically at all costs.
How is anyone free? You don't pick your genes or parents or where you're born and grow up, which friends you happen to make, or what opportunities come your way in life both for gain and for loss, trauma, abuse. How any of us grow into adulthood as fully functional compassionate human beings seems like a miracle, unless as OC said, you recognize that some people simply are just wired for evil, and need to be treated differently.
Wouldn't surprise me if some significant percentage of over 18s we're googling "how to vote?" as the poles were closing... I mean some were still asking a whole day after.
You give people too much credit. Most people don't spend any time researching and critically engaging with politics or even news, and you probably couldn't force them even if your tried to add compulsory politically neutral civics to the education system. Some people do well in math, but not in science. The same will be true in this class too.
Then there's propaganda fucking everything up even further. Most people are not immune to propaganda and misinformation, particularly when most of what they know comes from their friends, who are themselves very likely victims of misinformation.
I don't think even OP or OC meant that nobody would work. But "work" as we imagine it now need not exist. Most specialist roles are fulfilling enough that people do them enthusiastically and with passion. It would be first and foremost a worker lead economy, rather than people being desperate for jobs. Companies need to buy talent in a more competitive market instead, in all industries not just the specialisations.
I imagine there's still a wealth hierarchy but it's a lot less dispirate and follows meritocratic lines, including the merit of being willing to get your hands dirty doing dirty or dangerous work not currently possible to automate. And obviously being very talented at sport, music, art, comedy, etc such that people want to spend any excess wealth they have on supporting them or buying access to their content (like now).
It's not so different from now, it's just the continued progressive advancement of what we see in many
European nations already.
The point is that technology means a fraction of the population can feed and house the rest, and that fraction doesn't need to live like royalty, and the rest don't need to live in servitude for that exchange to happen.
Don't you want others to enjoy your success with you? Apply that principle to all of humanity the world over, and you have what could be, if we just stopped waring over hoards.
Nothing. I'm referring to be your standard ceramic one-seater. Girls need pee toilets too you see, or at least I'm yet to know of a women's urinal which women actually want to use.
There is a little bit of an assumption of the mad scientist here. Most scientists and engineers are very compassionate and caring people, even if many are excentric. We care about a thriving humanities department.
The psychopath cohort you're thinking of is the executive branch, or the people who made it to sales manager.