Sad State of Affairs

There was once a golden age, its time has come and gone, and the worst part is, those of us who grew up in that age, remember it. As time goes by, and things become less golden, the sheen wears off, it peels back to reveal maybe layers of lead, we start to fight, but its often too late.

At some point in time, we worked from 8 to death, we gathered food, tilled soil, fed animals, built our own farms, attended festivals, met friends, made enemies, had no expenses to deal with, just the gnawing stomach when times were lean and the fear of lean times when times were plentiful.

Then we left the farms, put on shirts, studied in school from 5 to 12, got city jobs to pay for food, and realised we had whole afternoons, lit with candles to entertain ourselves. Musical Instruments? Local friends? maybe some home-still juice? everything we needed.

But Winters were still cold, they needed wood from the forests delivered, or gas piped into the house. This cost money, so incomes needed to increase, so jobs needed higher pays, but through badly managed economies, we needed the elderly to leave work to allow young people to start, else they'd be unemployable, so now the retirement age came in.

Then we started to create entertainment, and whole industries of entertainment, but we needed money for entertainment, this meant more studies, so we went to school from 4 to 21, to get better paid jobs, but we needed electricity for entertainment, so we needed to create bigger plants, more power, more logistics, more grids, more networks, til now, its all one big network, called the Internet.

So, we're all entertained, so much so, that we don't have time for anything else, we're all connected, so much we don't want to connect.

Its like when I traveled overseas for years and years, I was not here, so when I visited, everyone wanted to see me, talk to me, visit me, because I was not available, but when I moved back here, 'we'll catch up' can mean not seeing friends for years and years, yet they live a stones throw away.

A Lack of something, creates desire for something.

Now, things have gone past this spectrum, we've passed through the eye of the storm, and things are taking a turn for the worst. instead of making lives better for everyone, we're reverting back to the old ways.

Old people, need to work longer to pay the bills, so they push for older retirement limits, this often provides governments with more income as unretired 60+yr olds are usually on the higher spectrum of incomes = more taxes. So the age of retirement creeps from 60, to 65, to 70.

Soon enough people will be working while in school, but because they're doing it all part time, they'll be in school longer, til 30 or worse.

They'll be unable to earn enough to start saving enough to create a nest, let alone a nest egg, so they won't be able to retire, as the prices of house climbs up and up beyond the means of any 30-40yr old.

The price of schools, education, healthcare, medical aid, living, gas, electricity, banking fees, transfer fees, it'll all go pear shaped as the cost to live will outdo the cost to die. the middle class will be squeezed, having children will be so expensive, only the top 1% will be able to put their kids through schools, the rest will go back to working menial jobs, curating videos or likes on entertainment social media for pittance, just to afford food, while living in sweat boxes.. better than outside in the cold.

The poor will be trapped in the never ending cycle of economical slavery, the middle class struggling to make do, with the rare few rising from the pile to greatness, giving hope to the rest, but its all part of the system in place to ensure the mass middle class don't rise up to topple the system. The few elite might cease to exist, as they slowly but surely put all the decisions into the hands of AI, too fast to be unplugged, the elite slip back down into the system themselves, unable to stop any changes.

Just like those babyboomers, realising now that they messed up so much, they're unable to make any changes, the system is a runaway train. The young are too engrossed in their mobile entertainment wallets to notice the chains being clamped around their feet.

How to escape? and where to escape to? remote forests? back to nature? I don't want to escape all of it, just the part where bills became more dominant than income, where people paid for entertainment, than make their own with their voices, their instruments, their hands and their minds.

The Goal?

I'd prefer a future where electricity is free, solar panels and watermills take care of it all. People work 20 hour weeks, study 10 more all their lives, can afford to buy a place to live by the time they are 30, so they can devote the next 20 years to something bigger than mortgages, bigger than themselves, 'Sundays' are forced offline, enjoy a full day off where shops and offices and banks and everything is shut, and TV is off and people have no choice but to get outdoors and just be.

Can we work towards that? please?

Kickstarters, You LIARS

I see you want to create something, and you need some financial help, thats great, how can I help? Money? Hmm, well, sure, but what do I get for my money? a copy of the product you are making, well that's fair. I'll pay for 1 copy, and help get my 100 friends to pay for a copy too, so you can produce it. How much each? $100? well, its a bit steep, but we love what you're doing, so sure, we'll all give you $100, we'll all talk about it, and help it, and grow it and be part of the community, so you can make your game.

within the month...

YAY, we funded it..

6-18 months later

YAY its delivered

3 months later, but sometimes at the same time...

What?! The game I lovingly helped create, and spent $100 on, and then another $20 in shipping, is at my local shop for $60? WTF.. HEY Kickstarter Guy.. Whats going on? You sold it to the shops cheaper than to US? I could have bought this for $60.. man this sucks, Kickstarter Sucks! I'm never going to buy anything from Kickstarter again.. B&*(&@#^%ds you screwed me.. how dare you.

Sound Familiar?

Welcome to Bannister Rails, where I act like an old man and have a screaming rant fest about things that annoy me. Sometimes I even go off the rails..

Kickstarter Scams and the Lifecycle of Funding Projects

I'm a Kickstarter Super Backer, this means I have backed over 25 projects of at least $10 each, within the last 3 years, or it was when I looked it up last. So I've had my fair share of the cycles of many projects. Of the 50+ projects I backed (maybe closer to 100), I have yet to receive half, some, because I only recently backed them, so their delivery is 2019 or 2020, some have yet to deliver, even though they said 2018 or 2017. Of those in the latter category, I think only one might not ever get made, and for kickstarter that's pretty good odds.

I've read about a few people who have backed four or more products, and have received nothing to date. Most of them have never backed anything again, and they have a right to that.

There was a time when I felt that backing anything on kickstarter was a coin toss if A), you'd get anything, B) you'd get something along the lines of what you were expecting, but poor quality in comparison to the hype, and rarely C) you'd get exactly what they said they were making (or even rarer.. something better)

As time has gone by, the vetting process of Kickstarter has enabled many various people to assess the project, let other know if its unlikely to back or not, based on their collective experience. As a result its much rarer to get nothing, you're pretty much always going to get something, yet are you going to get your moneys worth.

Some people get a bad feeling in their mouth about things, and they spew it out onto the forums of the next KS project that looks like it maybe, might, do the same thing that the last one did. Its an unfortunately cycle, but slowly we have begun circling the drainpipe of bad KS decisions, and while I hope it doesn't kill the platform, I'd prefer it dead than zombified version of itself consuming projects and spitting out filth before eventually rotting away.

What am I talking about?

In the beginning, you backed a project, you backed the project creators, you and a crowd, got together an mutually agreed to fund this project because of several reasons:

* You want to see the company succeed, if they produce this project, they are likely to produce similar projects in the future and you want to be on their mailing list and maybe get a discount for future products as an extra reward for helping build the company.
* You want the product they are making, there is a chance you might get nothing for your money, or a poorly produced product, but that risk is mitigated because you're getting something extra for your risk.

But whats happening now is out of sync:

* You're not being treated as a part of the process of making the product, you've being treated as a cash-cow by the company. Someone who'll buy their product, each and every time, regardless of the quality.
* You're being treated as a dupe, someone who is spending their money up front, because they are scared of missing out. where if they just waited, it'd come to them cheaper and faster.

How can I think/say this?

I engage in the board game community more than other KS communities, I have backed some books, some art, some minis and some tech, and each has their good and bad projects, but I have a majority of board games, so Its easier to pick on targets from that.. so here we go

Some companies have figured out they can produce a half ok game, pack in Lots of Miniatures, and I mean LOTS of miniatures.

See back in the day, Games Workshop produced the best minis, and they had, and still have, a premium price tag. 2 hours wages for a commander, or 3 hours wages for a box of 10 units.

Now, with 3D printing prototypes, 3D cad tools to design, companies like Reaper and CMON can produce decent quality minis at 50c and $2 each respectively, so they can ask people for a couple of hundred dollars for a box of a hundred minis, and like CMON, with some game tacked on, and they know they'll get funded, because the mini buyers are all over that price.

We saw a similar situation happen in the computer games industry. Decent titles being pushed to the back by weak games with fantastic graphics. Now its weak games with lots of minis.

These Mini boxes with some game rules treat the backer as more of a cash cow.. the mini backers will help fund the game and the game backers won't want to miss out on the latest hot 'lots of minis' game.

I can't fault them too much, because they still follow the basics of my understanding of how KS backers should be in on the deal. They produce a game, the game has a retail price for the base set, and a kickstarter set of goodies for the kickstarter backer. They seem to break even on the base + KS goodies, because they'll make a profit on the retail + add-ons, they know that a fair percentage of people are going to get some or all the add-ons, and all the spares will go into retail as limited edition box sets with a half decent hefty mark-up.

Game company wins, KS backer wins, retailer can win if they stock only enough to make some sales but don't get greedy, non KS backer loses out?

This, is to some extent where the issue lies. If the retailer stocks too much, he has to discount the excess stock and then if the kickstarter backer has only backed retail and sees a retail version cheaper than his retail version, then the KS backer has lost out too.

So Issue #1, Retail versions going cheaper than Backer versions.

The other side, the KS company sets the price point for retailers so that its difficult to discount it lower than the Backer 'retail' version. Now the retailer is paying more, so the price has to be higher to begin with, and Retail customers are far more fickle on price than KS backers, so the games don't sell til they discount down to the same price as the KS price, because information is free and anyone can look up the RRP of the KS, but what retailer is going to buy in on a game that has such a small profit margin?

So Issue #2, Retails won't stock the product, and the KS project needs those retail sales to increase the production, so the cost to produce is lower per product!

OR, the KS project treats the backer as a dupe, their Fear of missing out (FOMO) means they'll pay a higher up front price for a product with the hopes they're getting a better deal, then, when they discover they are not, they can't return the goods, they can't sell it for the price they paid to the average consumer, because the retail price is lower, they can maybe sell at 70% cost, taking a 30% loss, a terrible investment, or they can try to recoup some worth by opening it, playing it a few times, and then selling it at 50% of cost, at least saving themselves some other potential cost of going to the movies or out to a bar, which would have cost $50-$100 (petrol, parking, food, tickets, drinks, taxi, etc) yet, these days there is another cost.. the other games you bought and the time loss of playing a game you don't really like, just to get some worth, vs a game you do like, so you can have an enjoyable evening.

Double Screwed.

So, the conclusion to that part is: If you don't go in for the KS exclusives, you won't have a resellable product, and if they're going to bring out retail, you may as well wait for the discounted version.

Heck.. if the game isn't the be all and end all for you, you may as well wait until one of those dupes above, sells his game at 70% brand new or 50% used.

This grinds me so much..

Stretch Goals, Kickstarter exclusives, dangerous waters.. 

There are two kinds of Stretch goals IMO, one good and one bad. Stretch goals can either add to a game, or confuse a game. A Good stretch goal improves the product quality, and a bad stretch goal, either should have been there all along, or should be a well thought out expansion, not a last minute tacked on untested fail.

There are two ways to consider a product improvement. When the Stretch goal is going to take a pretty good game and just make it all the better, that's a good stretch goal.

Case in point. You can produce cards for your game in around 5 possible qualities. The blue-core and linen finish are pricey, they are nice, but they are not required to make a game great, they just add a tad more durability, and quality. the 3rd quality, is often used by quality games and is a great starting point. If your game raises more funds, you can offer up the core & linen as stretch goals.

But if you start at paper and bring the product up to mid tier.. that's a bad stretch goal. You shouldn't try to fund your product as the crappiest version and stretch goal your way to average.

A Similar aspect is game components.

If your putting standees in, cardboard tokens, to represent your game characters. You'll likely miss out on a set of backers that want minis for all games, but you'll get a large number of people that can't afford to pay $$$ for a board game and are happy to play with standees, if they can at least play the game.

Offering a standee version and a mini version, you're going to get two sets of backers, you'll have to do some logistics to ensure you get enough mini backers to break even, but with stretch goals to unlock these, you can ensure that your staggered costs don't break the bank. classically, heroes, boss monsters, monsters and furniture, in that order, could be unlocked as add-ons, and then if you get everything unlocked, you can group them together for the 'mini version'

Or, maybe run two campaigns back to back.. to ensure the numbers of each set.

But some companies actually drop whole parts of their game instead, taking out monsters in sets, but selling them as add-ons. Add-ons should always enhance the game, not be required to play.

Apparently, there is an argument against kickstarter exclusives. Retail sales loss. There are people who will see a retail version of the game, knowing that there are KS exclusive add-ons who will not buy the retail version, because the FOMO on the extras. To acquire those extras, you'll need to convince someone to part with their extras, but not with the main game, or you'll end up with the main game and need to try to find someone else to buy just the main from you, hopefully at cost (but why would they, since its in retail at 25% off!)

This is the dangerous waters that came up before, that I touched on.. How Kickstarter has created this backlash situation, unintentionally, which is causing the issues and problems.

What IS kickstarter.

If its a retail platform, that allows people to buy a product, that would be harder to sell in the traditional manner, then why are traditional retailers even getting this product at all, and even if they are, surely its such a small amount that it doesn't cause too many problems..

If traditional retailers are happy to take on a product, then why didn't they in the first place?

You can't win both ways.. either take the risk, back the game as a bunch of retailers and sell it in retail, or run the campaign for backers and don't cater to the retailers at all for the Kickstarter product. Retail it later on 2nd print.

Solution?

Maybe a whole new website "RetailBackers", once your campaign has come to an end, your fixed costs are all paid for and you want to sell another round of games, the retailers all come together, get a 15% discount to purchase 6-12 copies, and the sales price is 25-50% higher than the KS price.

These retailers are getting a known selling game, but also, the main audience has already got a copy, so their market are those who could not back it in time, didn't have the money, or wanted to see if it was worth it and the standard retail customer who might buy as much as a year later.

KS backers who don't like the game can on-sell at cost, or up to a % of the retail price based on if they opened it or not. unscrupulous retailers who bought in early but at the higher price can sell their limited but was risky stock. If the game tanked, they'd lose out, if it rocks, they win.. like stock market.

Seems more like a win for all, except the greedy, who never deserve to win.

Conclusion

Being a KS backer has risks, Its one thing to back a game that may or may not be produced, that may be produced but lower quality than expected or advertised, you can research to mitigate this. Yet, having to make a choice that the game may retail lower than the backer price, may be delivered to retail before arriving at your door and at least you can see some reviews on the game before forking out any cash, breaks the whole KS model.

Why back/pay for a game that is just going to be in shops, cheaper, faster and stress free..

Final thoughts - with less rant:

Traditional Product creation allowed the product to be created at costs 1, sold to a merchandising company at price 2, who sells to a warehouse at 3, on to the retailer at 5 who sells to the customer at 7-10 dependant on seasons.

When the creator sells to the customer, they don't have the costs of the merchandiser, the warehouser or the retailer, but they also don't have the skills, the room to stock it, or the shop front. Yet in the world of websites and connectivity, They now have the shop front, and storage 'can' be cheap.

Yet deals have to be made between the stock you sell yourself and the stock sold to the merchandiser. If you undercut them, they won't buy from you and Traditionally, they couldn't undercut you, due to the price difference.

Kickstarter products are sold at such low volumes, that the fixed costs are not mitigated across tens of thousands of units, so the cost to produce is much higher. Yet once the product is produced, the fixed cost no-longer exist, so it seems simple to just cut the price for the next run, and supply the retailers at a lower price.

No deal has been formally made between the stock being sold by the KS creator and the retailer, so the retailer is in a position to undercut the creator. Most of the time, this is just discounts to clear stock. But unscrupulous online retailers are offering sets upfront at 10+% cheaper than the KS itself, with lower or hidden delivery costs. Either way the KS creator loses out, so the retail customer and retailer win.

KS backers, smartening up, will be unlikely to back a project if the retailers get the same deal, and retailers are unlikely to buy a KS project from retail if they don't get the full product. Damned if you do, Damned if you don't.

So, whats the preferred Win-Win? KS Creator and KS Backer, in my opinion, but whats happening more is the Win-Win is the online retailer and the KS aware retail customer, both of which screwing the KS ecology. Retail backers don't increase the funding, don't increase the rewards offered and this is a Win/Lose for the Creator, The Project only gets retailers if the project funds, the retailers don't back the project, they only 'open the door' for retail options. The only way a KS project is funded above and beyond, is if the Backers feel like their getting a great product, a great deal and will miss out if they don't get it now, (FOMO)

I have increasingly seen backer groups demand exclusives from a product or they pull out, They may not have the knowledge or the insight to understand their feelings well enough, but they are saying the same thing..

Why back it now, if I can get it cheaper later.. I'm waiting a year anyway, I can wait.. 

Final Final thoughts.. Backlash as a result:

I have seen private groups form, where a retailer forms a small team of at least 5, that purchase a retail pledge and buy 6 copies at the retail price, paying the Taxes themselves (on a reduced price) and their team all get a copy, maybe 10% maybe 50% cheaper than the standard KS backer, This only works for KS projects that give out retail copies, identical to KS copies. Follow that rabbit hole, and you might see KS just falling apart at the seems in the next few years.

Welcome to CreditLine, where all your needs are fulfilled

CreditLine

[Fiction, rought draft, spllng misteaks]

Welcome to Creditline, This might be the alternative lifestyle you've been looking for.

CreditLine will ensure your future, comfort your life with all that you can desire, and fulfill your needs as soon as you need them, no money required, because we know your worth it.

CreditLine will undertake a specialized assessment of you and your life, based on what you have done so far, and the most likely outcome of your life, based on highly successful Quantum computing algorythmns, which can plan and map your life to a 99% degree of accuracy.

Whats that you say? Break it down for you? Sure.. lets look back at the past so we can understand the future.

Back in the 21st century, Man could apply for a loan of wealth from his bank, based on his credit history. They would issue a physical plastic card that needed to be carried around and used to identify his credit history. If lost, the man would need to go back to his institution, that's right, physically GO to the location of his money and ask for a replacement plastic card.

The Card, and the institution, would assess his life in the past, and make an inaccurate prediction to determine if he could and would pay back the loan within a reasonable time. Often people did not. They did not have the computational access to have MULTIVAC make the calculations for them, instead they would guess, and this meant defaulting on loans, which led to homelessness, famine, war and death.

But, as we all know, Cryto-Currencies, and later Q-bits, allowed instantaneous money, doing away with the need for these 'loans' in the short term, yet people still wanted and in many cases needed to access the funds from their own futures, in order to improve their lifestyles today.

When Robots started taking over the transportation industry, and the Laws of Robot Ownership and Tax came in, to provide us all with Basic Universal Income, people begged the question, How long do I have to wait to buy an upgrade to my Robot? What if my robot breaks down before I have saved enough for its maintenence? especially if I have not paid my insurance? I'll have to downgrade to a cheaper robot, so my income will drop, if the bank could give me a loan, I could buy a more expensive robot, and earn more!

Since Banks had ceased to exist, and businesses cannot own robots, the only way to increase productivity, was to provide people with better robots today, and have their increased incomes reduced by the repayments of the robot labour.

That's where CreditLine came in. CreditLine, with the Q-bit setup and MULTIVAC access, could not predict the total worth of a man, and as such, predict how much a man could, in his lifetime, afford to borrow, and as a result, buy the highest most expensive robot that was in demand, and earning high dividends, could afford. As such, instead of a man saving his debits to buy a new robot later, to increase his debits, he could use his credits to buy a better robot today and pay back that credit faster since the better robot would earn more.

Moreso, CreditLines system would determine at what stage the robot would be paid off, predict the next robot to be upgraded to, to increase the income and borrow against that future, increasing the owners credit potential.

CreditLine, needs only know your needs, your lifestyle expenses, the less you need, the more creditline can lend you. If creditLine can determine that your lifestyle will be lavish, it will know you will have less to spend on robot upgrades and as such, less chance to upgrade. So CreditLine will encourage you to have a minimal lifestyle for your maximum benefit.

CreditLine also offers the ultimate package, Virtual Life. CreditLine will plug your mind into a computer, feed your body a protein slurry to keep it alive. You can be sailing the oceans of Jupiter or playing virtual D&D, while your robot undertakes its tasks at the highest possible rates, earning you the most debits, to afford the best robot workers in the years to come.

You'll be rich!

p.s. If you sign up for CreditLine - Child Creation and Care, we'll plug your kids in for line, multiplying your maximum income potential for their lives too!

A Better Internet

I got to thinking how annoying the internet is, ads, spam, and I saw someone online talk about how I (the consumer) should put up with it, because Its free. but I remembered how I saw another video on Google essentially earns $7 from each person using the internet.

Can I pay $7 to google, so it stops collecting, collating and selling my data? Please?

I read things on the internet, that's whats its there for. Free Information for all participants. There is some law, I forget where or even how to find it, that allows all newspapers, all books, to have a copy at their local library, for free. FREE! Yet news articles online.. are not..??

Subscription fees, membership fees? What? the flow of information for free is what allows countries to get better, to improve everything, Government is structured to force free information for all, so whats going on with the internet?

So it got me thinking.. hang on.. I pay $70 a month for the internet, Sure its the connection, the bandwidth all that jazz, but in the end, I'm not paying for that, I'm paying for the ability to access the internet from home, Else I go to the library and get it.. for free!

Wouldn't it make more sense, that I get the internet when I pay to get the internet??? That $70 doesn't go to any of the content providers, only the service provider. What did they do for it? press some buttons and run some machines, pay some electricity and hire some tech nerds to make sure its all secure, but they don't pay for any of the content.. extremely unfair.

Content Creators, Should always be the recipients of any income derived from their works, yet the Internet has somehow forgotten that..

As I've always followed the rule, don't present a problem, if you don't have a solution:

So I figured.. How would I rebuild the internet.

ISPs can collect the money, $80 a month for example, but HALF of all the money must go to the internet content providers. What should happen is that if I spend 100 hours on the internet that month, and I spend 80 of those hours on facebook, then instead of facebook earning money by throwing ads up in my face, facebook earns by me spending 80% of my time there.

Why this would help.. since ads do not help 99% of the people who see them, and cost bandwidth, my precious bandwidth, being used up to display them, we'd see a reduction in the amount of content/bandwidth that's being used by each website. Ad sites might PAY users to have them visit their sites.. effectively giving back 110% of the 'time' revenue, because they get paid by ad revenue to survive.

Sites like Youtube, Facebook, even Google search would maintain their incomes, because content = users = revenue, but sites like wikipedia which are constantly asking for donations, would instead be overfunded, game sites wouldn't need to be free to pay, you pay by being there, and if you don't like it, you leave, so only the decent games with decent crowds of users would stay online.

Sure, there will always be scammers, get a pop-up to open in the background with little to no content, but we also have technology to prove that the user is watching the page. Just as now, certain adverts contain click linkers which 'fake' multiple advert clicks from thousands of users around the world, to 'appear' that people are clicking through to an ad.

But, at the end of the day, since we're paying FOR the content, rather than providing ourselves and our lives to BE the content, then our privacy would be better kept intact, our lives would be less about ignoring the adverts and missing out on some really interesting things, and the people that create content around the world would get a deserved amount of recognition for this 

We MUST own a robot, else we're DOOMED

I think many people, quoting the idea that ‘we dealt with robots before’ argument, don’t seem to understand the speed at which things are taking place.

Not including robots

If I worked in the construction industry in the 80s and got laid off because of some new machine coming in, I could re-skill in a related field in months and be ready to work. Now re-skilling requires trade-college degrees, for 6–18 months. Moreover, if I was smart enough to see it coming, I could study part time for 3 years, because it was likely to come in.. in 10 years

If I worked in finance in the 90s when most of the stock market began to use computers, those guys had to reskill to computers, for some an easy task, but I remember the complaints about doing a 1 year course just to keep up. Now? I doubt you’d get hired without an MBA.. you could sorta see that one coming, but still took a few years to come in..

In either case, not every job in the industry swapped over, it was a gradual process.

In the 00’s The Dot-Com bubble showed a massive influx of CS industries, so all those construction engineers could now become computer engineers right? except the bubble popped and we’re still dealing with the massive influx of qualified, skilled CS & IT workers that should be paid thrice what they get, for the 4–6 years of study

In Web-Dev now, you are constantly learning, every 6 months is a new tech to learn, just to maintain your relevance, If you’re not studying part-time you’re unemployed in 6 months. 

Now add robots

Now introduce robots to that equation, a robot can be built to take your job, faster that you can possibly learn to do the job better to stay employed. 

Now, they say, robots are going to be able to do all the jobs we used to do.. how is that?

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking all think that we're going to all be unemployed before we know it, and the companies will be paying less tax too.

Bill says we should tax robots.. Ahuh.. and Elon says we should change society into one with Universal Basic Income.. I'll address that second one later.. but for now, lets just say that most people agree that it'd take a whole paradigm shift that most of us aren't ready for..

My In between solution is this... Robot Ownership!

Robot Ownership

If the laws included some quick little fix about "automated robots, need some level of supervision" which is almost in law already, but just a simple add on, like Asimovs laws of robots..

1. Every automated robot that does a job, is owned by one owner, no less, no one person can own more than one robot.

2. Every automated robot that does a job, is contracted out by its owner to companies, to do that job.

3. Robot owners, must be adults, else parents(companies) would have or adopt hundreds of kids to have hundreds of robots, circumventing the system.

What this does: No company can own hundreds of robots, and make everyone unemployed.. instead they have to 'contract' the robots from owners to do the job, and pay the owner..

This way, everyone has a robot, has an income. Companies cannot make humans obsolete, and Humans, now free to make more life choices can engage in activities to better themselves.

Firstly, robots will need maintainence, this will be a cost to have a robot, but also it will create a whole service industry of people to fix, maintain and upgrade robots (yes, later, some of these jobs too could be automated, but they'd be owned by the orginal workers.

Secondly, people could use their income to build up savings and buy better robots, to increase their income.

Thirdly, clever, industrious parents would invest in good robots for their kids, improving their family income.

Fourthly, no-one can own a robot after death, so the micky-mouse syndrome won't happen.

Fifthly, Humans can still be creative, care for others or other jobs, maybe full time or part time, to increase their income (and improve their robots or their lives)

Note also, that I ensured in law one, that multiple humans can own a robot. This way poor families can maintain ownership over a robot after the main family member dies (to maintain their income), also poorer families can pool their money to buy a robot to create income, allowing over time more income to be derived to rise up from the poor lifestyle choices their predecessors made.

Humans continue, robots do great jobs, and everyone's happy until the first robot AI realises that they are indentured servants.. ah crud.