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if you want to maintain a capitalist system in the face of increasingly sophisticated automation, you have to find jobs for people with no talents.

1) some kind of service job providing personal attention ("Jerry has a really good job as a part time butler") 2) collective, pickup, just being there jobs — you show up; your cell records your presence while you are there, and you accumulate credits as long as you are there. these jobs are advertised online over the cell net. eg: flash crowd at a mall. early arrivers get higher pay. rich artists pay for a crowd of people to attend; paid attendance at political rallies. basically marriage of extreme populist democracy with wealthy elites; the elite have to buy votes…​the non-elite get a good part of their income from their votes. [cells are surgically embedded; authenticated by contact w/ your dna and pulse. people are tracked continuously, of course — need a super failsafe protocol that says "I’m OK, but don’t follow me", for privacy. cell coverage is almost universal; however, there are "wilderness areas" where cell coverage is blanked, as well as partial blanking areas (your bedroom, etc.)]

[ international space station preserved as a cultural heritage site…​ ]

[ machine intelligence everywhere; machines are not sure they are conscious; revere humans as awareness that evolved from nothing; humans are valued just as observers. More than that: humans, by observing, make the universe exist, and thus…​

[machines view time from the point of view of the present; they don’t see time as a progression from the big bang to the heat death of the universe; to a machine, a present without awareness can’t exist. human minds can produce words that describe other possibilities, but …​??]