> When a more advanced machine lets you replace 10 unskilled workers with 1, you don't pay that operator 10 times the wage, you pay him the same wage or even less.

But this is an unacceptable, or at least undesirable, outcome - for the majority of people anyway. If there is more wealth sloshing around the system, and fewer people involved in creating it, more of it should go to the person helping to create it. If this is what our economic system encourages our system is sub-optimal.