> I'm still a bit mystified by the people who believe that automation can, or will, destroy jobs. There are certainly huge local issues that happen when you sh

> I'm still a bit mystified by the people who believe that automation can, or will, destroy jobs. There are certainly huge local issues that happen when you shut, say, a steel plant or coal mine. We know that this happens. What would happen if we were to do the same thing to a whole tranche of jobs all at once? Perhaps you're talking on much longer scales, but you shouldn't ignore the shorter term (which is still long in human scales, it's not like these things sort themselves out after a couple of weeks). > But if you automate some of that work it's not like the undone work goes away, it's not like people won't pay good money to do that undone work. If they'd pay more for that undone work than the work that's being done, why don't people shift jobs?