[throwaway4aday]

we're still very far away from complete automation. one person now can do the work of 10 or 100 workmen in the past but people are still needed to transport and set up the feed stock, monitor, configure and service the machines, remove, inspect and assemble the finished products, on and on there are so many other tasks that only a general purpose agent like a human can do. you could construct an assembly line that is so completely integrated that it can almost run untended except for maintenance and recovery from failures but it will only ever produce exactly one model of one product and if you even need to change the weight of one of the parts it produces and then assembles you'll need to manually reconfigure a good deal of it creating significant down time.

it doesn't help that we impede the progress of automation by outsourcing labour overseas where the cost of labour makes manual processes still viable or by importing temporarily cheap labour until they realize they're getting a raw deal and move up the ladder with everyone else.

if we want to develop the technology needed to alleviate the burden of manual labour then we have to disallow these temporary quick fixes. if we do nothing they'll run their course in a few decades anyways, it'll just be a slow walk to the same destination giving the people who are acting in exploitative ways ample time to stuff their coffers with the fruits of their schemes while letting the rest of society rot on the vine mere steps away from the solution that would benefit everyone.