Civilization and the market place can be seen as a cyclic process of converting resources into commodities usable by the population, which then exits the population as waste products and is recycled into the resource pool. While the transition between resource and commodity is a human controlled, rapidly changing process, the transition between commodity and waste has largely been a natural, unchanging, and slow process.
We must recognize the existence of technological unemployment. Back in the ages of industrial and agricultural revolution, technology displaced laborers and farmers. These laborers and farmers later went on to fill in other jobs that technology made possible. Modern jobs, from IT worker to electrician, were brought into the world by technology because consumers were at such a technologically advanced point where they demanded such services.
Thus, I like to see the job market as a pyramid: as technology fills in the lower rows of the pyramid (such as crop growing), the upper rows (such as any white collar job) can be filled in by people. People are pushed up the pyramid of jobs by technology filling in the lower tiers.
The pyramid can also expand in size. Say it takes 10 workers to farm a crop and 1 to refine it into food. A machine is brought in (for simplicity's sake, it requires no maintenance) that replaces these 10 workers. Now we have 10 additional workers available to refine the food, but we only need one. Either we can fire 10 workers, or we can bring in 10 more farming machines that do the job of 110 workers, and have 11 workers available for refining the crop into food. So before the machines came, there were 10 workers farming and 1 worker refining. When the machines came along, there were 11 machines (worth 110 workers) farming and 11 refining. Now we have more food and no unemployment. This is how the pyramid can expand in size.
Now, the pyramid is limited to how much it can expand in size. If there aren't enough resources for 11 machines to farm and 11 workers to refine, workers will have to be fired, or fill in even higher jobs up the pyramid of jobs. Furthermore, if there aren't enough consumers to buy that many resources, the same result will happen. It has traditionally been that more resources begets more people (workers and consumers).
Let's take this pyramid analogy to the macroeconomic scale. As technology displaces workers, workers will either move up and up the pyramid (if resources remain the same) or up and across the pyramid (if the resource increases and the pyramid expands). Let's keep in mind that there is a finite amount of resources on Earth but so far, the population has been increasing exponentially as well as our technological progress.
We are so far up this pyramid of workers being displaced by technology that workers are starting to compete with technology to fill in gaps of inefficiency. While the technology for a fully automated fast food restaurant may exist, employers may find it cheaper to employ workers at minimum wage.
Thus, society will start to look at the other side of the cycle: instead of focusing on turning resources into commodities, society will start looking into turning waste back into resources. Currently, our methods of recycling are still largely natural, primitive, and inefficient. But the trend has been and will continue to be emphasis on recycling.
Eventually, civilization will reach the point where the pyramid can no longer expand in size because it is efficiently turning all of the Earth's resources into commodities and all of the consumer waste into resources. Maybe we will reach the point where (solar) energy is simply not enough to turn Earth into a near 100% efficient cyclic process of resources to commodities to waste to resources (we'll call this cyclic efficiency). By this time, maybe technology has displaced every single worker, and now all that remains are consumers. Considering there is only a finite amount of resources, there can only be a finite amount of consumers.
From here: we have two options. Either population growth halts (intentionally or not), or we find more resources. While the first option can manifest in several forms, from sustained birth control to apocalyptic world wars over resources to matrix-like robotic takeovers (all of which can come long before we near 100% cyclic efficiency), the second option will indisputably be space travel. By this point, we may have mastered fusion: we don't need to look for planets that can sustain life, just elements and molecules that we can convert into useful resources. Heck, by this point, it is likely that we will have reached matrix-like self induced technological singularity and no longer require commodities: just hard drive space to store our virtual civilization.
This whole thing may remind you of the Kardashev Scale, aka the stages of civilization.
Now let me remind/enlighten you that it is, by some, considered likely that advanced civilization should have existed before us and that it puzzles us that we have not made contact (not even indirect) with an alien Type II or III civilization. Statistically, intelligent life could and should have existed elsewhere in the Milky Way before us. Assuming intelligent life existed, there must be some incredibly strong factor that prevents intelligent life from becoming a Type II or III civilization.
In my next blog post (who knows when that will come, it's almost finals after all and I need to write a speech and do a project by tomorrow), I will explore what may prevent Type 0 and I civilizations from progressing onto Type II and III civilizations.
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Note to self: Explore the following:
Technological singularity and lack of motivation to explore space for resources (pyramid expands)
Catastrophic events such as world wars and robotic takeover (pyramid collapses, or civilization is the cycle of pyramid expanding and collapsing)
Sustained birth control (the pyramid stops expanding and does not collapse)
Which is more likely?
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