That there are new jobs of a different kind is not much consolation when one likes the old jobs.
But that surplus workforce found jobs in other areas, creating whole industries where there had been nothing. Can't have Post-mates without workers and restaurants. Can't have restaurants without more workers and food distribution. Can't have food distribution without more workers and food processors... etc.
Ivy league english majors get jobs writing TV and movie scripts. Mass electronic distribution means that many many people get to watch the creative output of a small number of people. All the other people who used to write are available to fill new niches in the economy.
Yep, the transition is difficult, and they'll complain about it, but society as a whole benefits.
For many it remains still not that wise a decision.
>All the other people who used to write are available to fill new niches in the economy.
Yeah, I hear burger-flipping is still in demand.
I appreciate the ELI5, but it's not that I don't know history, or I don't understand that some jobs die and others replace them.
It is that I consider some jobs dying a problem, whether they are replaced by something else or not, and doubly so in the way that that transition happens (and some people in each generation get the short end of the stick).
ok, but it's not that some jobs die and others replace them, it's that efficiency gains allow less effort to satiate demand and thereby create a labor/ingenuity supply for new endeavors.
the job of writing (or performing music, etc.) did not die, it's that the demand for satisfying arts consumption can be met by a smaller sector of the economy.
And much easier to make it as a television screen writer.
The mediums have shifted