Vishal, your article offers very promising ways we can continue to create enterprises and jobs as automation moves forward. However, there are many more opportunities for real world development that need to be followed. Some of the major categories include:

• Addressing climate change through mitigation of its impacts and adaptation to the climate driven changes already beginning: rising sea levels, extreme weather, changing capacity of ag land and water supply, & mass migrations.
• Restoring urban, rural, and wild ecosystems
• Restoring abandoned buildings to high environmental and energy quality for new enterprises, civil society and public use .
• Expanding the infrastructure and workforce for the transition to sustainable organic farming. Includes restoring crop land and forests after decades to centuries of mismanagement. (Your separate article, Reimagining Big Agriculture and Food, covers the technology side well. However, the more fundamental change is to land and water management based on awareness of soil as a living system existing within a larger ecosystem.)
• Realizing a full transition from fossil fuel-based energy to distributed renewable energy systems, with policy makers and investors committed to a rapid shift.
• Services to elders to maintain quality of life, preventive care, assisted living, hospice, transportation, etc.

One of your pathways for development is problematic:

You say, “We need to focus on technologies that drive abundance, not scarcity. This kind of orientation would enable us to improve affordability for the masses, ensuring everyone will have access to quality lifestyles.”

This emphasis needs to be tempered by awareness that technology is not going to cancel the limits of planetary resources. We need a shift from consumerism to mindful redefinition of quality of life. We need a shift from a growth-based economy to a steady state economy.

One of the giant issues in the global economy is the very slender margin between cost of production and the price consumers pay for most goods and services. With many products there is no room for further cost cutting.

With appreciation for the explorations you are enabling!

Ernie Lowe, CEO Indigo Development