> Once everything settles out, life on Earth may approach some sort of leisure
> paradise. The transition is genuinely scary.
Exactly. As a morph on a often quoted parody - "It's the transition, stupid".
> If we can play the cards out right, perhaps we can avoid the huge disruptions
> and chao some have postulated..
As Robin Hanson pointed out, the vaccine against such a transition is to gain a
share in the means of production. This could be anything from owning a small farm
to operating a small desktop manufacturing facility. I hesitate to say tradition
financial investment would provide an adequate vaccine in the face of possible
hyper-liquidity of the market. Currencies might fluctuate so wildly that all your
investments could dry up before you knew what hit you.