And each time it's been a little closer to the truth. We mechanised the farm removing the need for hundreds/thousands of people to work on farms. Those people

And each time it's been a little closer to the truth. We mechanised the farm removing the need for hundreds/thousands of people to work on farms. Those people went to work in factories and mines. The mines have moved to larger machines with fewer workers, preferring to use large open-cut techniques rather than underground mining wherever possible. Then we automated large numbers of factories, and there were some more transport jobs moving stuff around en-masse. Now we're looking to automate the transport jobs with self-driving vehicles. When we automate transport jobs, where do all those people go to work? Businesses are not automating things because they think it's cool, it's because it's a lower cost alternative to having humans do the work.