For example, Marshall Brain’s 2003 novel Manna describes how AI progress in a libertarian economic system makes most Americans unemployable and condemned to live out the rest of their lives in drab and dreary robot-operated social-welfare housing projects. Much like farm animals, they’re kept fed, healthy and safe in cramped conditions where the rich never need to see them. Birth control medication in the water ensures that they don’t have children, so most of the population gets phased out to leave the remaining rich with larger shares of the robot-produced wealth.
