That's a sort of tempting thought and it's mostly right IMO. My suspicion is that it doesn't take that many people to keep the factories running but it does tak

That's a sort of tempting thought and it's mostly right IMO. My suspicion is that it doesn't take that many people to keep the factories running but it does take a lot of people to make new factories and improve efficiency at existing ones. And modern society is so predicated on growth that you literally need these efficiency improvers or the wheels fall off. On any give day or week or perhaps even year they don't matter. But over a decade they probably do.