[sveme]

When people starve and have no means to revolt against their massively overpowered AI/robot overlords, then I'd expect people to go back to sustenance farming (after a massive reduction in population numbers).

A while later, the world is living in a dichotomy of people living off the land and some high tech spots of fully autonomous and self-maintaining robots that do useless work for bored people. Knowing people and especially the rich, I don't believe in Culture-like utopia, unfortunately, sad as it may be.

[heavyset_go]

Where are they going to farm?

This is a problem our ancestors faced with the enclosure of the commons. As dispossessed subsistence farmers, they had no other option to survive other than selling their labor. Their land was privatized and with it their way of life destroyed.

We still live in the world where the commons is enclosed, subsistence farming is effectively illegal.

[morningsam]

That's assuming the AI owners would tolerate the subsistence farmers on their lands (it's obvious that in this scenario, all the land would be bought up by the AI owners eventually).

[sveme]

I wouldn't believe that any sort of economy or governmental system would actually survive any of this. Ford was right in that sense, without people with well-paying jobs, no one will buy the services of robots and AIs. The only thing that would help would be the massive redistribution of wealth through inheritance taxation and taxation on ownership itself. Plus UBI, though I'm fairly sceptical of what that would do to a society without purpose.