You just moved the problem up one step. Instead of finding someone to hand you a tomato cost free, you have to find someone to hand you a tomato-making machine cost free. You are a lot more likely to get someone to hand you a free tomato (if we are talking zucchinis, you will be hard pressed to find someone who WON'T try and give you some free ones).
Someone has to create, design, engineer, and develop the automation systems too. Increases in productivity and new technology can reduce costs to ALMOST nothing (relatively speaking), but never zero. Anything that requires some form of human intervention, skill, or labor will cost something unless that person is a slave. And even slaves need to be fed.
And if we develop technology to the point where it can do what human beings do, as far as design, creativity, and the rest, we come full circle. Odds are that machines that advanced will also want to be paid, or will complain of being enslaved.
Rossum's Law: Any machine advanced enough to do what humans can do, will demand what humans demand for their services.
Hal's Law: If a machine can worry about whether or not it has a soul, it's got one.
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re: Sure they can
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- Star Trek and technological abundance