Doing nothing

My mother always wonders why the super rich still engage in business. Why don't they enjoy the pleasures they can find around the world. Why do they exert effort to improve their business, enter into new business and are seen bargaining hard for their business. My theory is that it is simply tough to enjoy idleness all the time unless you are a sage.

We have grown in an environment where effort and achievement are appreciated. Being lazy or even appearing lazy is condemned. There are umpteen adages reinforcing hard work.

What are we working for. To feed ourselves and to live a life of comfort. We also enjoy working. Like a truck driver loving to be on the move through various places of a country. Like a teacher enjoying the development of young minds. Like a financial analyst loving to juggle numbers and convince a client on a proposition. We love that it provides an avenue to apply our thoughts and it offers an opportunity to achieve by functioning beyond expectation of others. Lot us have defined our lives through achievement in our career and our purchasing power. However, we also complain the taxing nature of our work.

Here comes artificial intelligence to shatter all of that. It can take up all the routine jobs and relieve crores of people around the world from drudgery of work. There is a proposition to offer minimum wages to everyone. That is the simple part. Are people ready to be jobless or to re-skill for taking up the available jobs. Large amount of people having lot of time at their hands would be a huge problem for the world.

Will our civilization find new goals to engage everyone. Goals like combating global warming, enabling space travel and exploration can engage a lot of people. Or will we enter into internal struggles. 

Will there be a boom in entertainment and sports, since so many people may choose to live on their minimum wages and would have lot of time to spend. Will more people turn to religion to find a direction to their lives. Will people invent more, come up with ingenious scientific discoveries as numerous people will have opportunities for scientific pursuit when their basic needs are taken care of. Will there be high demand for programmers, hackers, mathematicians and scientists to go through the complex world of artificial intelligence. Matrix-like where thousands of lines of codes can hide destructive agendas. 

How will the rich people/scientists/programmers etc react to people leading comfortable lives through their efforts but paying nothing to them.