To continue this line of thought, consider one of the most powerful companies in the world: Walmart. Walmart creates stores which are automated systems: each st

To continue this line of thought, consider one of the most powerful companies in the world: Walmart. Walmart creates stores which are automated systems: each store has employees which manage day to day operations, and thousands of different vendors provide their products that are shipped to each store, and sold with a small cut given to Walmart. Hence, Walmart employs a version of the "take a tiny cut" system. An easily envisioned future store would completely automate this process with automated transportation (driving AI?) which took the products from the vendors and delivered it to stores, automated day-to-day operations (theft control systems, automated check out counters, etc.), and require only a small amount of tuning (a couple of "real" people in each store to accomodate any edge cases, like an unsatisfied customer who wants to complain to a live person). Such a store would require minimal management (occasional technical fixes and a couple of human managers), but each sale would take a tiny cut of profit for the company. The first company to successfully (without "bugs") engineer such a system would undoubtedly become incredibly rich.