The radical idea of a world without jobs

I had similar thoughts about the meaning of it all. But I didn't question life per se, I questioned the rat race. "Why am I working all day?", "Why do I spend the best parts of the day in an office?", "Why can't I still afford a house even though I make good money?" and questions of that nature.

I wasn't as unhappy as you sound, I just didn't see the purpose of it (working) anymore.

And so I decided not to do it anymore. Instead, I've decided to buy a small amount of land, live sustainibly, start a market garden, and spend much more time with my family and integrate with nature more.

Life isn't bad, but it sounds like you're stuck in a rut. Perhaps you just need to find your passion, and make a plan to transition from where you are now, to where you want to be?

This gets into how you identify a human (I'm saying for the sake of simplicity that humans are the only things eligible for rights, and ignoring animal rights and such) Is there something inherently human about humans? How about coma patients whose functions are limited? Is there some necessary set of functions a thing must have to qualify as a human? That seems to get into dangerous territory for some handicapped people.

The reason this matters is it's conceivable that an AI in a robotic frame could emulate practically all the behaviors we associate with a human (including behavior to display artifacts humans interpret as emotions, like smiling or crying). At that point, is such a thing a human? Or is it merely a fully-realized model of one? Does it make a difference?

This is the subject of tons of speculative science fiction. From a strictly computer science perspective, though, you can easily define a "square" class that fully implements all the behaviors of the geometric concept of a square. That doesn't make instances of it a square, though. They're merely digital models of squares. This is also the significance of the famous "There is no spoon" scene in The Matrix, when Neo has a realization that everything in the Matrix is a model which he can reach into and alter the properties of. Therefore, there's a strong argument to be made that from an objective perspective, even an AI that perfectly mimics human behavior is just a perfect model and not a human. However, humans being emotional creatures the objective argument will almost certainly not matter in that scenario.

This also has implications for the science fiction concept of "copied personalities", which Black Mirror loves playing with. If you make a digital copy of someone's mind, do they still have rights? I'd argue no for the above reasons, but again, there's an emotional angle which will usually override the scientific angle.

A former Turkish colleague who moved from Turkey to Germany told me the same. The material side of things is covered well in Germany. And because of this, because basically everyone has all their needs covered by the system, people do not need to rely on each other – and they don’t. The vast majority has the means to help themselves and never have to ask anyone else for help.

My colleague felt alone, even though he lived with his girlfriend. I think our material abundance fosters isolation. There is no reason go to your neighbor and knock on their door. You live isolated in your home, you move anonymously through traffic, you work in a closed environment, you go home, and the cycle repeats. There is little room for accidentally making friends or even just having conversations.

Reorganization of society need not be implemented in a top-down manner. Encouraging small changes in the activities of individuals can gradually sum to major changes over time. We have the brainpower to enact a project of this type, not every revolution has to be at gunpoint.

Well, using figures from http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/, if we take the top eight, sum their fortunes (conveniently expressed in billions), and divide by 3.6, we find that a maximally equitable redistribution would allocate, to each of the lucky recipients, the princely sum of $165.38 US.

So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we don't really need to do the math on this one, do we? It doesn't even pass the sniff test - "these eight people are LITERALLY THE WORST" is just far too uncomplicated a proposition to accurately reflect the reality of a human world which, though many things, is never simple.