Yes, and we left people behind repeatedly. You'll notice people who may have intellectual or learning disabilities can no longer find a job with a decent wage in the US. Previously they could, because manual labor jobs were plenty. Now those are automated.

When we further automate and automate, we raise the barrier to entry, because robots or AI can perform the bottom most tasks. So, people who are not capable are left behind, and eventually there will be nobody to work jobs.

If the average job requires reading and writing, most people can do it. If the average job requires a high school diploma, less can do it. If the average job requires a degree, even less can do it, and so on and so on.

Isn't the end result - all work being done by technology and all people having all of their time to spend on fun activities - a pretty nice situation?

What could possibly make you think this is the end result?

In the past 50 years, productivity across the whole economy has went up over an order of magnitude. People in the 70s were working 40 hours a week - are you now working 4 hours?

We don't have precedent for this, is my point. The solution to lost work is make people work something else. My point is what happens when there is no something else for those people to work?

Will we have leisure? Who will pay for uncapable people to have leisure? This sounds like UBI.

> all work being done by technology and all people having all of their time to spend on fun activities

Maybe in the end, but what happens before that? Like, say, 25% of people are "smart" enough to still work a job, what happens to the 75%? Or even 90% of people work but 10% can't, do we just like... kill those 10% or?

We haven't really figured this out.