But can people be unemployed because we run out of things for humans to do?
-- You'll always have something that some other human wants the human X to do. Whether that other person can pay human X sufficient money to make that activity their job is the question. And it seems plausible you'll reach a point where the answer will be no for a lot of people. You can call that "structural" if you wish but it seems related to the marginal utility provided by a given person and that goes down as one finds automated alternatives.
Anything that can be a job. Whatever people are willing to pay others to do, limited only by imagination.
And just from the definition of money, it's unlikely to find a scenario where people can't pay other people to do arbitrary labor. There will always be people that have a majority of wealth, however that's denoted
It's not possible for civilization as a whole to run out of jobs or money. both are human social concepts and can be re-imagined at any time
From the industrial revolution we've being living in a time of effectively limitless energy and without having considered the consequences of tapping that energy. Fossil fuels, and other resources are running out - or we can at least see the end of them - and the consequences of their use are starting to bite hard. Realistically we're looking at a 2degC average global temperature rise this century, and the destruction of ecosystems due to that relatively rapid rise is going to be massive.
When the energy and resources, that we've used to support a consumption economy, grow more scarce that economy will no longer work. We won't be able to get ourselves out of low employment by just consuming more and so making more jobs.
>There will always be people that have a majority of wealth, however that's denoted
That may be true but we can narrow the spread of wealth by a very large factor; and morally we should do so.
> both are human social concepts and can be re-imagined at any time
I think that's what's essentially being advocated (whether now or later): reimagining human social roles outside the wage/employment model (and perhaps distributing an "automation dividend" to ensure liquidity and market demand).
-- You'll always have something that some other human wants the human X to do. Whether that other person can pay human X sufficient money to make that activity their job is the question. And it seems plausible you'll reach a point where the answer will be no for a lot of people. You can call that "structural" if you wish but it seems related to the marginal utility provided by a given person and that goes down as one finds automated alternatives.