Let's not overlook the fact that robots have already replaced many humans, "freeing" them from their labor. Remember most robots are not nor should be androids, that is, robots that physically look like humans. We currently have robotic auto workers, dishwashers, laundresses, (One source has estimated the electricity used by a typical American family to cook their food, heat/cool their house, clean their clothes and dishes, vacuum their floors etc. as being equivalent to the labor of over a hundred servants. It's good to be the king. Not to mention our various electronic court jesters, TV, VCRs, etc.) manual laborers of many stripes, robotic bank tellers (ATMs) robotic tax preparers, robotic book keepers, even robotic police (those red light cameras that take your picture, fine you and issue a ticket, all with minimal human supervision) and soldiers (the military is working on pilotless spy drone planes, and possibly other robotic tools of war) We don't quite have robotic gladiators, as Battle Bots (TM) are technically not robots, just remote control devices, but they will come soon. Robotic police and soldiers are problematic, and we will get back to them later.

The technology exists to replace many more jobs with robots, and anyone who has worked at many unpleasant jobs, such as fast food workers, would certainly rejoice to hear that no human ever has to load a fryolator again.

However, here we reach the problem. In our society, if you are in the lower classes, unemployment equals poverty. Removing a human worker from an unpleasant and/or dangerous job should be an unqualified good thing. However, in our current system, there is no way to guarantee that that person will continue to receive a comfortable standard of living. For that understandable reason, many labor unions and others have been fighting a well meaning rear guard action to prevent the further spread of robotics, and its concomitant loss of jobs. While we are sympathetic, and certainly not opposed to such efforts in the short term, in the long run the struggle must be to break the association between unemployment and poverty.

The means to do this is within our reach- the country has more than enough wealth to clothe, house and feed everyone. Why should we work at meaningless, boring, often wasteful jobs, when we don't have to? Don't buy into the rhetoric that everyone has to pull his or her own weight, the value of honest toil, etc. If we truly believed that, we would force all of the rich to do honest work as well. Instead we buy lottery tickets and fantasize about becoming one of the rich. There is certainly much value to physical exercise, and much to be gained from mastering a skill, be it carpentry or web design. But this is no reason to force people to do jobs they don't want to on pain of hunger, homelessness, medical neglect, even arrest for vagrancy. How many people do you know who are fortunate enough that they wouldn't quit their job if the won the lottery?

Through cybernetic socialism, we can have as much wealth as we need, and no one will be forced to work when they don't want to- let the robots do it.

This is unlikely to happen however, as we do have a minimal support system in place. However, to keep that in place the independently wealthy will have to be taxed more heavily. In order to maintain their wealth, they have to keep the capitalist market going, which requires greater profits, which requires goods and services to be sold, which requires customers with incomes. Either this means that the capitalists will continue to sell each other products and ignore the lower classes, or they will support the lower classes with welfare, and/or busy work. Yet the profit motive decrees that replacing a worker with a robot, when it becomes affordable, must be done to remain competitive. So both of these systems will become unstable.