“Technology will free us from a life of drudgery!” has been the promise for what, over a hundred years now? We all sit around at our leisure while robots prepare our dinner.

What actually happened in agriculture is that technology enabled massive conglomerates to dominate the industry. I see few guarantees that technological progress is going to free me up to do something else that enriches my life.

“ The spoils of technology went straight to the top while workers switched to new jobs that pay horribly.”

I have a hard time believing you believe that most people switched to a worse paying job. Did peoples material quality of life improve or not?

Technology has already freed me from a life of drudgery.

> Farming automation and the green revolution didn't make us all unemployed - it meant 90% of us could do something else instead of farming.

There was actually a lot of fear that there would be mass starvation and competition for food because food production could not match population increase. It was an existential threat, much like how we look at global warming. And that fear today? Gone, and most people never even knew it existed.

One has to consider the impact on dynamism. It may not matter to many but it would be something management would have to consider before entering into new areas for development.

I think unionization would impact expansion and research areas —the big bets where now if something doesn’t work the company either reorganizes the team or lets go of a team. With a union companies would operate more conservatively.

That would perhaps provide stable jobs for current job holders but limit growth for prospective job holders.

Outcome for whom, though? We can use fancy words like "Pareto" or we can argue that it doesn't matter if a productivity improvement gives a billionaire more toys if everyone else is experiencing smaller houses and a worse public environment.

> Outcome for whom, though?

Everyone who is not a slave, serf, or subsistence farmer

One thing we're not experiencing is smaller houses. Compare now to the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1890s. Productivity improvements have not led to smaller houses. Empirically proven.