It's more inefficient than Capitalism, which is its Achilles heel. Socialism works when there is 'free' production to fuel it. Like in the Netherlands. It fails when the money stops pumping in, like Venezuela. Automation may provide the free input that makes a more humane (more Socialist) system work for everybody?
There is such a thing as production decoupled from labor.
We still need a way to allocate the limited resources, but the primary way to do can't be labor/salaries anymore - because in the near future, unlike all the past millenia, labor of most people is simply not needed for optimum production.
I can't think of a single industry that has been able to completely decouple production from labor. Even something as simple as subway ticketing machines or vending machines require technicians to deploy and maintain them. Sure, most people that sold tickets lost that job, but economies have always found a new occupation for most.
Seems to me most have exaggerated expectations of the impact of automation.
Are you saying resources get hurled into space when we use them?
Also, value can increase in a finite resources environment. For example, my iphone is worth a lot more, and is a lot more useful, than the materials it's made of.
