Counterpoint: Yesterday's useless robotic dog [0] is... today's useless robotic dog [1]. I've been working on various autonomous robotic technologies long enough with no visible progress that it's starting to feel like vaporware to me.
It's too early to make the prediction with certainty, but I won't be at all surprised if 20 years from now "autonomous delivery drone" is right up there with flying cars and nuclear fusion on the "20 more years" shelf.
Let's not get hung up on details, if you have the resources to consider 51%ing Bitcoin for presumably nefarious purposes, you're probably a government/big finance/oligarch actor and you're probably not penny pinching.
We could draw parallels to warfare, the one industry that historically warps everything around itself. First we fought with spears, swords and shields, then with primitive musket guns. Suddenly tanks and planes and helicopters join the frey. Then carriers, submarines, missiles and targeting systems. Radars. Space satellites. I'd be surprised if there aren't secret projects that simulate the same potential conflict a million times to decide chance of success given new parameters.
And every time the new advancement in technology blows the previous ones out of the water, but it is open to its own exploitable faults. Tanks beat infantry in open field, but they're less suited for urban warfare if you don't want to leave the city in ruin.
This is one of those cases where that Ford quote about a faster horse is relevant. Many people will be happy to just have what they have now without thinking how it could be better.
You're right. We gotta push for Global Universal Basic Income. Someone surely has "X% of people live on less than 5 dollars a day" stats available on hand. If it makes their lives better over there, they have less incentive to uproot their life to go over here.
