The rich don't just own robots, they also own the mines, the factories, the railroads, the self-driving transport trucks and the cargo ships. The non-rich don't own any of that stuff. So how are the non-rich going to make anything?
Essentially this hypothetical is a scenario where the rich have "gone Galt" (stopped producing useful things for the rest of the world). Your fear of the rich abandoning the rest of us to our own devices is very Randian.
Except the rich do not just leave to paradise to never return. At the sign of wealth to be had, at profit to be made, they probably will return to reap the fields and use their market-destroying automation power to crush "competition".
That, and as has been said elsewhere, I highly doubt the elites just go to an island. Ownership of land is a tremendous wealth, and while the elites have captured it they will not relinquish it willingly.
How will the rich make any profit? The premise underlying this conversation is that the labor of the non-rich humans is completely worthless. Robots do everything they can do for less money.
So the rich may swoop in, use robots to produce goods for their own consumption, and then leave. But how does this prevent non-rich humans from producing goods for other non-rich humans? The rich have no incentive to compete with those human producers, since the consumers have nothing of value to buy with.
You seem to be suggesting that the rich will direct their robots to fulfill the needs of non-rich humans for no personal gain. Is that correct?
Markets are power and owning markets is a power unto itself. If the poor create their own markets, those markets are vulnerable to the elites using their technology to usurp the market until the poor are helpless again.
I am in no way saying the rich will use robots for the social commons. They will use robots to maximize their power in the world. Just like today, controlling the market is controlling discourse, and if the elites ascend beyond market scarcity they will still want to control the market of the poor should one emerge.
Natural resources (including land) are not going to be fabricated. They may be synthesized through nanotechnology at some point, but you still need raw materials, and it is unlikely even post-scarcity it will be more economical to endothermically manufacture abundant elemental metals found on Earth than by just sending a fleet of robots to harvest it.
Without resources, the poor cannot create. Without land, they cannot farm or mine or harvest. The rich already own the vast majority of both, and have absolutely no incentive to relinquish that ownership even if they no longer need it, because demonstrably today the vast majority of the rich already do not need their wealth and power, but want it.
What specific action do you believe the wealthy will take when they "usurp" the non-wealthy markets? Provide goods that the non-wealthy consumers want at lower prices than non-wealthy producers? Given that the non-wealthy consumers have nothing of value to the rich people, why bother?
Certain monkeys have markets, the primary goods being food and sex. When are we wealthy humans going to "usurp" monkey markets and try to gain "power"? When are we, the wealthy humans, going to start spitefully consuming garbage, wild fruits and insects simply because monkeys also want these resources? When will we, the wealthy humans, claim all the forests and kick the monkeys out?
You've postulated a world where non-rich humans are as economically useless to the rich as monkeys are to modern day humans. In the real world, we don't generally engage in any of the behaviors you describe.
Certain monkeys have markets, the primary goods being food and sex. When are we wealthy humans going to "usurp" monkey markets and try to gain "power"? When are we, the wealthy humans, going to start spitefully consuming garbage, wild fruits and insects simply because monkeys also want these resources? When will we, the wealthy humans, claim all the forests and kick the monkeys out?
Who says we have to spitefully "usurp" the monkey markets? Don't we do enough damage by casually destroying their habitats and driving their species into endangered status or even extinct?
Same goes for wealthy people. You don't have to ascribe an utterly destructive mentality to them in order to explain the harms of what they do. All it takes is simple pride; the pride they have for the companies they've grown, the profits they've amassed, and the technologies they've developed. To then say we want to take those things away and redistribute them to the public for the greater good is to make that person into our public enemy. Why wouldn't they do everything in their power to hang on?
You've ignored the real question yet again. One more time: "But how does this prevent non-rich humans from producing goods for other non-rich humans?"
Is it really your belief that after the rich go galt, the non-rich have no possible way to survive except by robbing them? That's a surprisingly Randian view.
It's simple, really. Picture an apple orchard, as it operates today. Hundreds or even thousands of migrant labourers employed to tend the orchard and pick the apples at harvest time. Now imagine small aerial drones which have been developed to harvest the apples automatically and bring them to the warehouse.
Extrapolate this idea across a vast array of industries and you begin to see a pattern: huge numbers of jobs which have been replaced by automation. Where will all of these people go? Who will they work for?
Now imagine a time much further into the future. Unemployment has skyrocketed. Millions of people are starving and they can't afford the apples they used to pick for a living. So what? They decide to "invade" the orchard and steal the apples for themselves! Ahh, but drones come to the rescue again! Machine-gun wielding aerial drones patrol the orchard day and night, efficiently defending the property from any and all would-be thieves.
How does this prevent the former apple-pickers from growing their own apples? On whose land do you expect them to grow?
They can grow apples on other land. The world is hardly overpopulated and the rich don't own anything close to every parcel of land. Heck, the rich have no reason to even waste drones defending their surplus landholdings, just as most owners of large tracts of land don't typically defend it against deer.
As long as the non-rich don't interfere with the drones harvesting apples for consumption by the rich, why would the rich care what they do?
Further, you seem to think the rich own most land. They may own most parcels of currently valuable land (e.g. Manhattan) weighted by land value, but that's not remotely the same thing. There are large amounts of land in the world which are currently laying fallow because there is no current use for them. E.g., Detroit is more or less abandoned (but well suited for industry), as are large amounts of flyover country which were formerly used for farming.
