[bamboozled]

Can you name one industry where labor is truly no longer needed, where it once was (in recent times)?

Maybe an example of a person who makes a large some of money through having zero employees where they used to have many and where those people were replaced with automation and completely obsoleted.

Not challenging you, I'm just interested in your theory.

[AnthonyMouse]

Pocket calculators. Paper calendars. Film cameras and film development labs. Alarm clocks. Analog telephones, one for every room. Pens and paper and correction fluid and typewriters and typewriter ribbons and typewriter repair service, as physical things that required labor to exist.

A phone/computer replaces all of those, but it's one product instead of hundreds. It doesn't take anywhere near the labor to produce as all of those things once did.

[uzakov]

I would say IT is an industry that made itself, as well as other industries greatly reduce the number of employees.

Not quite zero employees but numbers were reduced greatly, ie accounting. Example: accounting, before you needed a team of accountants for a mid level enterprise, not sometimes even one is sufficient.

[puranjay]

> Example: accounting, before you needed a team of accountants for a mid level enterprise, not sometimes even one is sufficient.

If The Office was made today, you'd just have Oscar in accounting and Jim closing deals alongside a robocaller

[uzakov]

Essentially this!

[puranjay]

To be fair, Dwight was likely modeled on a robocaller!

[bamboozled]

Do you work in IT?

Because I'm constantly gobsmacked by inefficiencies and companies that have too many people involved in achieving simple goals?

[uzakov]

I do work in IT.

> Because I'm constantly gobsmacked by inefficiencies and companies that have too many people involved in achieving simple goals?

That is also true, by no means I am implying that. There is a lot of inefficiency in many companies, but at the same time what took X people in the past now takes X-Y people for many sectors, ie accounting. Another good example is website creation and development for Small-Medium Enterprise. In the 90-s/2000s you had to pay someone to create a website for you, where now there are countless website builders, some of which are really great.