There are a few modern day industries that may offer some ideas. As traditional booksellers get overtaken by e-book publishing and big box retailers, there's been a trend of independent bookstores that survive the change by becoming a boutique that offers more than a physical book. They host book clubs, parties, meet-the-author events, nice places to read, and friendly service. Likewise, I imagine many people would pay for the privilege of sipping coffee on the patio of a Vienna coffee shop. While your bill seems absurdly high, since you can fab up coffee (and the cup it comes in) for free/almost free, you're paying to keep the place open in the physical world. Whether customers patronize such establishments out of aesthetic appreciation, or to compete on the market of status (that one commodity that is never too scarce to compete for), it seems likely that most "average" people will be employed serving others. Especially considering that the people with the most money may be those who want to continue living in a facsimile of 21st century earth. Any economy that uses currency will have a financial sector. Even if all the hard work is done by expert AI a thousand times better than we can, there'll still be hucksters, advisers, and people gaming the system. Ditto the entertainment and PR industry (which may be intertwined to the point of being indistinguishable). After all, the way we practice art would have seemed absurd to the old masters! And of course, prostitution. Even the best expert AI can't match the spontaneity of an actual ego, and screwing an AGI is simply *obscene*. This might even be an honored profession in some habitats, with the highest practitioners being more like actors who happen to have sex at the end of the show. Those paying for sex and those paying to be *seduced* could be two entirely different markets. Hell, I could even imagine people getting off on *refusing* the advances of one of these professionals after days of flirtation. In every case, you're paying for an experience, the cost of which is subsumed into the otherwise trivial cost of what you're buying. One might argue it's all mostly make-work, encouraged by structures of power to keep transhumans running on their hamster wheels. I suspect those without ultra-high demand skills spend most of their time playing a status game, going from contract to contract or trying to get small businesses off the ground. I disagree with the core book that everyone would be able to find 40 hours/week of work--that's not even true now. In anarchist habs, I think most people are over the whole jobs thing. There are tasks that need to be done, and those with the skills to do those tasks are pressured to take them on, or train others. Everyone plays or works according to their interest. --I wouldn't be surprised if transhumanity was on the verge of a decelerando--a slide back into slow, incremental development after the explosion of the singularity... unless the threat of mass extinction comes knocking once again. EP suggests that there's still quite a bit of work for transhumans (in any economy) to do in science and technology--whether that's maintaining the systems that keep the whole hab alive, or doing basic research that will become next decades weapons and communications. For my own part, I don't believe anyone without a menton-level intelligence and drastic biomods would be able to make major original contributions--though field researchers and intelligent lab assistants would still be useful. It's possible that many other jobs are glorified make-work that people do for enjoyment (unless they are among the clanking masses--after all, even the future is likely to have work that no robot can do, but no human wants to do). I suspect many people are itinerant creatives--they work part time to pay the modest cost of upkeep in a PC habitat, and write their novel, direct XP's or street performances, design simulspaces, etc--all with the hope of getting licensed by a hypercorp so they can retire to a private hab. I think it undermines suspense to have everyone involved in dark conspiracies--I feel there has to be a baseline "normal" from which the characters can leap into the unknown. Just my $.02