We’re living in the age of abundance. The age of the algorithm. The age of… well, automated utopia.

Who would have thought that this soon, with machines doing all the work, we would also have found the solution to technological unemployment? The point is, just as horses became unemployable with the invention of engines, so humans became unemployable in the age of seriously smart machines.

We call it “Roboearth.” When a robot arrives from the factory, it’s essentially lifeless; it can’t do anything useful. But once it’s powered up and connected to the robot internet, it can find out how to do anything, from the cloud. So it doesn’t need any programming.

Again comes the question: If we don’t need human programmers, and even the robots are designed by algorithms and built and maintained by robots, what do people do?

The solution was to tax the robots. Their labour tax goes towards providing everything that humans need for their daily enjoyment of life. Sure, if you want something more than Roboearth normally provides, you have to get up and get creative, really inventive, and invest in something even the algorithms haven’t thought of. Something analogue. Then you can charge your own form of ‘tax’ on the machines.

For the rest of us, it’s just, well, so simple. Or is it? Who’s really in charge here? Us or the machines?