[hakfoo]

The other factor is that we have plenty of potentially automatable labour, but it always exists in the context of real labour markets.

Think of the pretty marketing videos of automated disassembly lines that extract valuable materials from scrap, and the practical reality of paying people in the Global South pennies per hour to do it.

Once the cheap option is off the table, the last mile effort to close out some of those industries gets moonshot efforts. This also breaks some of the prisoner's-dilemma problems with early automation-- if your cost basis is higher because you're first to automate, you lose, but if everyone goes together, they all have the same cost risks and you probably unlock the economies of scale you couldn't get alone.