TLDR; Communism is coming
Perhaps a debate for another thread, but its been my VERY long standing opinion (like since I was a student 40-odd years ago) that ultimately the entire world will have to controlled by some universal central, essentially communist power. Coming from me as a devout capitalist, that might seem surprising!
However, the way I see it is that AI is progressively going to replace more and more and more jobs. It's a inevitable progression as they - and robots - become more and more capable. The inexorable end result is that human labour/endeavour/thinking/creativity will not be required at all, in any sector. Of course this extreme end game is a long way off - perhaps 100 years? Who knows. But it's sure as hell going to happen.
In a "perfect" world, this would be marvellous. All the wealth creation would still be happening - because the work is still being done - and we'd all have all the money we currently have, but with all the leisure time in the world to pursue our own interest. Work would be entirely optional - for perhaps a tiny bit of pay - but you'd be paid your full salary anyway, for doing nothing.
Of course, with our current world politics and economic systems, this cannot happen. As jobs are replaced, companies who are competing with each other and driven by a profit motive (necessary so they can survive) will simply see the replacement of humans as a cost-saving measure. They will have no desire to pay people who are not working for them, since that would burden them with excessive costs compared to their competitors.
So inexorably again, more and more people will be out of work and impoverished. Those remaining in work and those in positions of power will get richer and richer. This is an unsustainable model, doomed to collapse. Eventually societies will break down as the impoverished refuse to accept any longer living in a life of poverty. And whereas now such people (in the west) are few in number, when they become the majority, things will have to change. You could call it a social revolution if you like - the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. That man Marx has quite some insight IMO!
Governments alone are powerless to prevent such an upheaval. Whilst they might over time seek to introduce more and more socialist policies, providing increasing wealth for the poor and unemployed, doing so will merely make their economies uncompetitive compared to other nations which are much less generous. We have seen exactly how this happens as we have witnesses the growth of China to soon become the world's biggest economy, such growth driven by the relatively poorly paid and impoverished state of its workforce, compared to the relatively fat, dumb and happy counterparts in the west. In coming decades we may well see similar meteoric rise in the African economies.
So how does this all get fixed? Only when we have total global alignment, where all countries are more or less on the same level. A bit like how the EU countries really need alignment before joining the Euro. Mechanisms need to be put in place to pay people for being out of work, at such a level of pay that there is equilibrium - so only a few people actually want to work, to do the few potentially human jobs that still remain. Being unemployed will be a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice, with no stigma and a very comfortable level of existance, with 99% of the wealth compared to not being employed. That's the end game I envisage, in perhaps a couple of hundred years from now.
Getting there will be a long and very rocky road, with upheavals and even wars inbetween. The great superpowers do not sit comfortably at the same table and whilst they strive for supremacy in ever more challenging economic circumstances, it will likely get ugly.
