[Fantastic_T]

>Industrial machines such as the Jacquard Loom could only affect one industry at a time. And in doing so we brought about the service economy.

The power loom was but one variation of a more fundamental technology: the steam engine, and more generally, the combustion engine.

Beyond engines, the Industrial Revolution saw a rapid shift to all kinds of mechanisation, almost all of which were made possible by combustion engines. This affected countless occupations. The occupation of the Luddites is but one example. It was not limited to them.

I am not at all concerned about the speed and breadth of soon-to-occur automation. Automation reduces costs, leading to people having more money to spend on new types of products/services. The cost of a product/service being roughly equal to the human labor needed to make it, we will always consume the same amount of human labor (subject to changes in the supply of labour, as people voluntarily drop out of the work force as their prosperity increases), because a reduction in the consumption of labour in one field (as a result of automation), leads to consumer savings, which are spent on consuming labour in another field.

[tzs]

> The cost of a product/service being roughly equal to the human labor needed to make it, [...]

The cost of a product/service is only roughly equal to the human labor needed to produce it when the human labor cost is significantly higher than the material costs of producing that product/service. When you heavily automate production, the cost of human labor becomes an insignificant factor in its cost.

[Fantastic_T]

The cost of automated processes approaches zero over time, because automation can be scaled up so easily, so the cost of human labour, and scarce natural resources, will always trend toward 100% of the cost of production inputs.