Did you mean this to be all "inclusive" of every human? My take on this statement is one that is biased. Money is essential to a church or organization that will feed starving children, help the homeless, provide surgery for those misfortunate children born with a cleft palate and the list goes on. These organizations become very creative in finding ways to raise "money". I would call those acts "loving".
I am not sure You are aware of just how much money is donated to "charity." It is a LOT. However, the percentage that actually goes to helping People and not to lining pockets is statistically nil. For example, I temped at the MDA years ago filling in for a lady on maternity leave. I prepared the deposits from the fund-raisers, depositing, from that single location $50,000 to $75,000 a WEEK. In talking to the Patient Services Coordinator there, I discovered that the MDA gave Her a budget to help People with muscular dystrophy of $1,000 a YEAR! Think on that a bit.
"We"? Shouldn't that be "You"? So when someone creates a device and it functions, isn't that success? If you are so skilled, as led to believe in your posts here and elsewhere, then what did you feel when you created an electrogravitic device and turned on the switch? Was that feeling of "success" worth more than any amount of money?
No. I meant "We." Yes, there are other means of measuring success, but Human society as a whole sees those who have made vast amounts of money as "successful," regardless of contribution. As for Your comments about building a device, You know full well that:
1) Materials - BEST materials - are either prohibitively expensive or hidden in black projects
2) I am NOT an inventor or builder - I am an economist, etc., as stated in the OP
3) I am living in poverty
This does NOT imply that I am not AWARE. Not educated. Not capable of seeing things and grasping their foundation.
What a simplistic answer along with a bit of callous disregard for those that spend their time building the "robots". So, let's look at it a bit more in depth. There will be those that "build" (we can insert the word "create") the "robots" that will perform the work that "no One WANTS to do" which will remove the "human energy" that makes "everything....free" for everyone else. So, who decides who builds the robots? Wouldn't this mean that there would be those who "work" to provide robots for "those" that don't? I suppose that these individuals would be magnanimous by just doing all that work while there would be those who just sit at home?
I in no way disregard Those who build robots. In fact, I find joy in the fact that so many would build them for the sheer bliss of doing so - IF They could afford to. We would see many more People creating them than at present, because so many would love to but have no opportunity to do so. A great deal of the creative things in life will burgeon as Those whose gift, whose bliss, it is to do them have the OPPORTUNITY to. It is NOT an issue of "be[ing] magnanimous." It is an issue of People doing what They LOVE to do, regardless of any currency. And surely People do good works strictly for the social currencies.
Now I can anticipate the response. Robots would do the construction, robots would free mankind of the drudgery of all those jobs that no one wishes to do. This is the recipe for the creation of an antipathetic society and a society that will sink into non-creativity. Agreeing with a part of what Linda has said, creativity is stiffled when there is no need. How many individuals would really take advantage of this removal of drudgery and expand the human condition? How many generations would it be until there would be those increase of the antipathy where society in general would be considered stagnant?
No... Though I do see robots doing any manufacturing no One LOVES to do, the designing and prototyping will go to Those who LOVE to do it. And on the contrary, creativity will explode as those who now are accountants and day laborers and any other job that robots could do or are unnecessary without accounting for meaningful energy expended are freed to both have the time and resources to be creative as is Their bliss. As to how many? Who knows, but it is irrelevant. There is enough on this planet to support a MINIMUM of ten times the present population, and with FE & robots, We all could choose to be couch potatoes... But the reason We presently have couch potatoes is because Those who are cannot AFFORD what They REALLY want - education, supplies, travel, etc.
I don't agree that we are at that stage. We are in a society in the United States of America that provides so much for so many that cannot provide for themselves. How much creativity is created in these individuals when so much is provided for them? "Social engineer"? Entitlements are doing just that, they are engineering a society dependent upon others and what you are proposing would be the seed that would grow into a dormant society.
For all that is "provided," I can assure You it is, at MOST, barely enough for any Individual to survive. SURELY not enough to afford creative efforts. "Entitlements" do NOT offer a life rich in choice and opportunity. Because You are evaluating behavior constricted by a system accounting for meaningful energy expended, where there is no chance to be creative, You assume that People, freed from this blockade to creativity, would NOT create. A poor assumption. Would You claim the "elite" lack creativity...? In fact, FAR from "dormant," and especially if We supplant the work "ethic" (the slave's 'ethic") with the Betterment Ethic, the arts and the sciences will both burgeon and benefit Us FAR more than those ventures driven by a profit "ethic."
We are not there yet and have a long way to go. Maybe the barter system would be better for then at least, individuals would have to do "something" to eat and not just sit and wait for someone to bring the food to them.
We only SEEM to "not [be] there yet," when We measure things within the confines of a system that requires People to give up Their bliss to "earn" Their place on this planet pumping Human energy into the system for a few shekels that do not support Their bliss, only (and most often marginally) Their basic needs, provided cheaply and degradedly for profit.
