We will all be freed from toil, but freed to what? How do you reconcile a free-market economy with a highly automated one? From Angelo Young at IBT Times:

“As the 106,000 contract workers who lost their Nike jobs in the past year can attest, apparel manufacturers have decided that it’s cheaper to invest in technology than to hire even the world’s lowest-paid workers.

The relentless move toward industrial automation is undercutting vulnerable workers around the globe.

For years, China and India offered manufacturers a low-wage workforce. Production recently expanded around Asia to countries like Cambodia, Bangladesh and Vietnam as well.

But now, automation is allowing manufacturing to stop chasing cheap labor altogether. Automated production machines cut costs and immunize manufacturers from the dangers of a labor shortage.

‘I think this is going to accelerate,’ said Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. ‘What we have is a situation where robots and automation do more and more tasks that are being done by low-wage labor in Asia and elsewhere in the world. People involved in repetitive work are very vulnerable to what’s happening.'”