Of course we don’t need them. We don’t need so many things that the ruling class pushes on us like war and austerity.
What we have now is feudalism with a few extra layers of abstraction. Can you picture feudalism without the need for a class of serfs? I'll give you a hint..on a long enough timeline this humanoid robot serf replacement program produces only two potential outcomes:
- countless murdered poor people.
- post-scarcity utopia like we see in Star Trek: TNG.
Which one do you think is more likely?
Further thinking on this topic: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=SQOhfYjLoy2rt0lw