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by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2014
The dark side of all the diverse lifestyles Post Snap makes possible is that Us versus Them thinking will likely become strong again. This will happen because it is the cybers who have to coordinate globally, not humans. Human society will loose the strong push from global economics harsh reality to "Think Globally" in order to gain local prosperity.
This dark side manifest itself as local-oriented provincialism and gangsterism of various forms. A contemporary example of this was the gossipy, acrimonious 2012 election campaigns being conducted by both Republicans and Democrats. To combat this problem -- if it is decided that it is a problem -- the cybers may set up an artificial economic reality which promotes thinking in terms of bigger groups. In other words, the cybers will set up the economy so that to "make a living" people are going to have to deal with other groups around the world. The cybers will adjust human economic reality to make this kind of global interaction profitable.
This is a surprise use of a technology, in this case economics. It can be used to create designed recessions. So... Will the cybers bring about "designed recessions" for humans to experience? Will they use this as a tool to promote human social dream changing?
I can see the post-snap economic situation resembling that of modern Greece's between joining the Eurozone in 2001 and its debt crisis crash in 2009. In that Golden Age era many government jobs were created and financed with newly available debt financing. The social peace bought with all these new jobs was substantial, but the unforeseen consequence was that the relevance of these jobs to helping the Greek economy thrive was small. This irrelevance caught up with Greece in 2009, and... crash! But if the post-snap cybers are doing 90% of the economic legwork, there's no reason this irrelevance has to catch up with a post-snap economy -- these human jobs are just another way of keeping humans happy, they are not relevant to productivity or economic output.
So booms and busts can be used by cybers to make and dissolve jobs. Recessions can become another social tool. Worrying about work is an instinct. Job uncertainty is just another way of using instinctive thinking as a social manipulating tool.
How entitlement jobs are created and destroyed needs some thinking about. It is likely the jobs will be created and controlled by politicians and bureaucrats, who will still exist. But what drummer will they be marching to? Who allocates their funding?
A second-tier surprise consequence is that these "designer hard times" will also afflict directly human-supporting creations, such as creation personal assistants. They will be put out of work as well. This may lead to moral outrage in some segments of the cyber community for this pain infliction. Most of this cyber/creation side of the pain and outrage will be handled out of human sight, but there may be surprises.