OK. I am gonna say it:
The era of work is gone. There are no consequences to money printing now that technology can churn out much more than we need: food to unlimited supply of virtual goods.
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The petty differences between what we now call "countries" will be gone too. The winners in the future are those can grasp a bigger slice of printed money from the "system", and the losers are those poor fellas who don't grasp the concept.

The humane thing of all, unlike all polarized society in human history, is that the winners no longer need anything from the losers. Not even as slaves or prostitutes. There is no need to exploit them. In fact, the quality of life of the losers will still be the best in history.

What they do need, though, is a clever segregation. A system to sedate and control, however subtly. The winners do this as a charity, as compassion to still the same race, and not for any material reasons. In fact, the existence of the losers matters not.

As the winners can have all that technology can buy, for nothing. The losers still vote and elect their presidents or senates, but it will be come a pantomime..

The choices are plenty: games, virtual reality games, dreams and stories are the top lists. After all, if VR glasses are so good, there will be no reason for any one to ever take it off.

The segregation is thus built in the system and permanent. As time goes by, it is no longer possible to know what the winners pursue, or even they still exist from the losers point of view, except that every now and then they might benefit from some drop out technologies.

As the majority of human virtualized their lives, there is less and less activities that can be observed from space. In short, earth will fall dark.

I fear that's our future. And I am confident that's not just humans. In fact, that's the most likely explanation to the "Fermi paradox", explaining why alien civilizations are not observable. In short, segregation and virtualization are the natural next steps for any civilization

We are already at the door step.

Ditch all your perceived knowledge.

Welcome to a new world.