[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by jammies

It's a different, but interesting discussion though - we run a consumer driver economy, so what happens when large numbers of consumers are idled by technology-driven efficiency? The talk of new industries opening up for them is dubious, for one thing, many people are only competent to do rote and simple tasks, which are the ones that are now being entirely automated.

The Industrial Revolution replaced physical labour with machine labour overseen and mediated by humans, and thus farmhands could become factory hands. Factory hands, though, are not likely to become software engineers and materials scientists. The service industry, where they would otherwise go (at much reduced wages and expectations) is being automated as well, and that's going to be more and more socially destabilizing as the pace of that accelerates, and chronic unemployment becomes the norm.

They should be ground up and used for food/fertilizer before this becomes an issue.