Good point -- thinking out loud, it seems to me that automation would just drop the price of goods.
Imagine Moore's law applied to food and transportation -- wouldn't grocery stores and fedex have to lower their prices to match competitors? Suddenly food becomes cheaper and cheaper, until you can buy a lifetime supply of rice for $5 (unfathomable today, but you can buy a "lifetime supply" of textual data storage for probably the same price).
I mean, there could be collusion and cartels to restrict supply (diamonds), but something as important as food production wouldn't be kept restricted long (food could become a utility).
Imagine Moore's law applied to food and transportation -- wouldn't grocery stores and fedex have to lower their prices to match competitors? Suddenly food becomes cheaper and cheaper, until you can buy a lifetime supply of rice for $5 (unfathomable today, but you can buy a "lifetime supply" of textual data storage for probably the same price).
I mean, there could be collusion and cartels to restrict supply (diamonds), but something as important as food production wouldn't be kept restricted long (food could become a utility).