In Monica Hughes's story, "The Price of Land," the government saw human life in dollar symbols. The story tells of a farming family who had not experienced the best of luck making money off of the farm. Money was short but there was a solution offered by the government; not too with farming or anything like that. Jim, the father figure, received a letter, with an offer that would prove hard to refuse. Jim's seventy year-old mother in-law was living with him and his family. She was collecting a small pension and was a contributing member to the household. Although the penny-pinching government saw that it would be cheaper in the long run to just 'buy' this woman's life and give a cut of the money they would have spent to support her in her last years to her family. The offer sounded good to Jim, though he did feel bad, and Gran thought it would be best for the struggling young family. They went through with the deal and Gran was euthanized.
             Does this sound like nonsense, or could this type of thing really happen? I think it would take a severe moral breakdown in society to bring about those types of changes. But, what would it take? Here's a scenario I have thought about that is somewhat similar to the situation presented by Monica Hughes.
             Approximately one hundred or fewer years from now the world could see a revolution fueled by the rise of technology. Technology meaning, communications, robotics and automated computer controlled systems. Like the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we could see a population growth that might disturb the distribution of wealth.
             Another possible development in the future is the robotic workforce. This in itself is quite a concept when you consider the number of jobs that could be taken away from people and given to robots. The unemployment rates could seriously damage our economy.
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