Doctorow suggests the possibility that robot-driven abundance could undermine the need for markets as we know them. “Property rights may be a way of allocating resources when there aren’t enough of them to go around, but when automation replaces labor altogether and there’s lots of everything, do we still need it?” Assuming a post-scarcity system of distribution evolves to peacefully and fairly share the fruits of robot-driven post-scarcity production, jobs as we know them might not just become unnecessary—they might stop making sense altogether.

The idea that robots could make employment itself optional may sound fantastic. No more work! But the end result could be more, not less angst. We’d still have to find our place among the robots, except this time without work as a guidepost for defining a sense of purpose. By eliminating the need for people to work, robots would free us up to focus on what really makes us human. The scariest possibility of all is that only then do we figure out what really makes us human is work.