[rowanajmarshall]

> Replacing blue collar workers for robots hasn't been super duper great.

That's just not true. Tractors, combine harvesters, dishwashers washing machines, excavators, we've repeatedly revolutionised blue-collar work, made it vastly, extraordinary more efficient.

[vineyardmike]

> made it vastly, extraordinary more efficient.

I'd suspect that these equipments also made it more dangerous. They also made it more industrial in scale and capital costs, driving "homestead" and individual farmers out of the business, replaced by larger and more capitalized corporations.

We went from individual artisans crafting fabrics by hand, to the Industrial Revolution where children lost fingers tending to "extraordinary more efficient" machines that vastly out-produced artisans. This trend has only accelerated, where humans consume and throw out an order of magnitude more clothing than a generation ago.

You can see this trend play out across industrialized jobs - people are less satisfied, there is some social implications, and the entire nature of the job (and usually the human's independence) is changed.

The transitions through industrialization have had dramatic societal upheavals. Focusing on the "efficiency" of the changes, ironically, miss the human component of these transitions.

[sokoloff]

We also went from a society where over 80% of Americans were farmers to now under 2%. The human component of that was enormous(ly positive).

How many acres do you want to personally farm as your never-ending, no sick days, no vacations ever existence?