Ok lot's to respond to. Here goes 
38 minutes ago, slayemin said:
In India, labor is ridiculously CHEAP. You can hire an armed guard to protect your business and pay him $0.03 PER DAY. Three cents per day. To have someone standing outside your building, risking their life to protect your assets. In India, labor is SO cheap that if the thermostat for an air conditioner breaks, it is literally cheaper to pay a guy to walk into each room, hold up a thermometer for 10 minutes, and adjust the temperature manually, than to pay to replace the thermostat. So, that's what they do. A guy spends his whole day walking from room to room, holding up a thermometer to measure the room temp because he's cheaper than the $40 cost to replace a part. Here's another example: In India, it is more expensive to pay for the electricity to operate a ceiling fan than it is to have an Indian spend all day waving a fan around manually. It's mind blowing. Labor in India is so cheap that Indians who get a PhD, move to America and take on a prestigious, well paying job, can't actually function properly. Instead, these PhD's will quit their jobs and move back to India and take on jobs which pay $15/hour. Why is a PhD working for $15/hour in India instead of making 6 figures in America? Because... labor is so cheap, that these people can pay for a massive household staff to do everything for them. Laundry. Cooking. House cleaning. Child care. Everything, for pennies. The Indians just can't handle living on their own in Western countries because they don't have slave labor anymore -- so, they move back home and live a great lifestyle.
Now, you can't really have a productive discussion about automation and AI without acknowledging rock bottom wages and the impacts globalism has on labor.
Dude my parents are from India man. I know that place well. Cost of living in India is a lot cheaper in general. A loaf of bread is less than one dollar. I could be wrong, but as I understand it, most basic necessities in India are cheaper too. Your description of the lifestyle of many middle class and higher and well educated Indians is definitely spot on. I'm not sure how many people have gone back for precisely that reason, but some have certainly.
Absolutely the impact of globalism is worth discussing. I'd still argue that automation will ultimately trump even this mainly because a machine will usually be better than a human at most tasks in manufacturing. Plus we will only get better and generating more energy in a more cost efficient manner.
9 minutes ago, mikeman said:
So...what do you think is the reason for the inequality between the 3rd world(or Global South) countries and the West? Are people there just less industrious and/or intelligent than westerners? Acts of God? Fate? Pure luck?
Well, since you posed this question, I'd be curious to hear your answer on it actually 
6 hours ago, mikeman said:
There are many forms of socialism - the common factor is basically that the "means of production"(in this case, robots) are collectively and not privately owned, and goods are produced for use and not for profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_for_use
(there's a section in there - "Cybernetics" - that deals with the option of utilizing computers to assist in the allocation of resources).
This thread was started, I think, on the premise that private ownership(of the means of production of wealth again, not personal possessions like your Xbox, car and toothbrush) will start to not make much sense in the case most jobs can be automated, so I just naturally presented the alternative. 
Well, yea, in my mind, I envisioned something along the lines of a centralized AI/algorithm that's responsible for resource allocation that no one owns (or everyone owns, depending on your perspective). It's not utopians per se, but more just that resources are allocated algorithmically based on the principles of supply and demand. At the end of the day, these are all means of allocating resources.
6 hours ago, mikeman said:
However, I really don't think the thing will be ever as simple as "okay we have robots now, let's do Star Trek/full luxury automated communism" - for starters, let's not forget that not every country is as technologically as advanced as USA or Western countries in general.
I also got a feeling that, even if it was proven without a doubt that socialism(again - public ownership of the means of production and production for use and not profit) can handle mass automation better than capitalism, there are many many people that will shout "Better Dead than Red" and go down proudly with their Atlas Shrugged copies on hand as everything else collapses.(if we assume the current system collapses, which is the premise of the thread).
On your first point, yes, certainly not every nation enjoys the same technological standard as the US or the West. Most likely, in order to implement something like this, you'd need to have more globalized governance, which would probably take ages on its own.
On your second point, however, there definitely is a stigma around anything that even remotely sounds like Communism/Socialism. Arguably what I propose/believe to be the future isn't straight up 'everyone owns the means of production' but more that resources are allocated in a manner that guarantees a basic standard of living.
The question then arises that can humans be motivated to do things without competing with others or without a consistent material reward? Probably any automated management of economics will require that most provide some sort of service to society. Should such an algorithm allow people to essentially be dead weight? What can people do that is a): beneficial and b): self actualizing? There are a lot of questions with automated management here.
5 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:
As to moving away from capitalism... that will probably not work. Too many people actually like the system as it works today, no matter if they are profiting or not. Too many are afraid of anything new. Too many times a non-capitalistic system has failed in the past.
I'd argue that eventually capitalism in its current form will not be able to sustain automation. There will be a point when large swathes of people will find themselves out of a job. Take for example truck driving in the US. It is one of the largest professions in the US. It won't be long before it's automated. What then? What will truck drivers do?
1 hour ago, Luckless said:
Of course the "Big bad evil elite ruling forever" only works if the "big bad evil elite" are actually entirely unified in their desire to crush those under them.
If a few of them begin to focus on a benevolent approach in an attempt to train and harness more creative minds to find some leg up over the others, then the 'big bad evil system' is readily topped: The 'lowly poor unwashed masses' end up utilizing the same tech and abilities against those who might otherwise oppress them.
Plus who would want to live in an elite lifestyle that puts a target on your back and at risk of a beyond horrible death in the event of some lowly hacker finding a bad enough exploit? Sure, the odds of being a target from a hacker in general are always going to be there, but personally I wouldn't want to encourage building a world where I have billions of people wanting me dead all because I want control and power and to make their lives miserable.
A core elite may end up being in control of all the technology and production, but in the long term it is probably far more effective for them to use that control to ensure healthy happy lives for the rest of humanity. Healthy and happy people are far less likely to plot your violent murder after all, and people NOT plotting your violent murder seems like a good thing in my mind.
This is a pretty good point too against most dystopian scenarios with automation. And I'd also argue that sure, while algorithms and drone might be really good at protecting an overlord, when the entire population will probably be looking for some way to crack the guy's defenses, someone will eventually do it imho.
