looks around
Certainly seems that way.
How many tribes, peoples, and nations no longer exist because they had a less efficient means of production than their neighbors?
Fun fact: hunter-gatherer lifestyles require far less work to maintain self-sufficiency than agricultural lifestyles. In fact, it wasn't until around 1900 or so that agricultural societies caught up to hunter-gatherer societies in metrics such as life expectancy and general health welfare.
Note that as population densities rise, land becomes a bottleneck for a population more than number of available hours.
Critically, the work was done by fewer humans (per unit of caloric energy). This allowed other people to specialize in other ways that provided value to the farmers.
Whoever specializes to automate doesn’t care about the craft or quality as much as quantity. We’re in a better place now, luckily nobody goes barefoot these days, but I wish there was a solution where craftsmen could continue doing their art and craft the way they are used to without being pushed out by automation. I wonder if a compromise could be reached to meet that halfway such that automation becomes merely a tool in the hands of craftsmen, a solution where man is still at the center of his game and uses tools to enhance their game.
But the general consensus is that everything will be eventually automated away and the only things left for people to do is entertain eachother or something to this tendency.
This is not a personal dig, but you clearly did not brush with the real world. There are a lot of smart people out there that through no fault of their own couldn't go to collage, but there are others that would not get far anywhere...
That's just how the cruel distribution mistress works.
Try and start a farm now, you can't compete without serious investment.
The high tech farms will send their overabundant produce 2000 miles and still undercut you, while profiting.
It's impressive, really, but it does put many local farms and would be farmers (lots of land, no other skills/ideas) out of a job.
and so would you argue the same for the farmer who planted fields? Did that farmer kick the ladder for the hunter-gatherer?
The new guy _should_ have a different education, and provide value in a different way. May be instead of doing automate-able jobs, he/she now works as an entertainer, paid for by the guy who did the automation (as they are richer now, and can afford to do so).
The thinking that 'automation' destroys jobs is too narrow. The pie grows bigger when work is automated.