Comment by fc417fc802

Sure, things continue to persist as a hobby, a curiosity, a bespoke luxury, or the like. But that's not at all the same thing as an industry. Only the latter is relevant if we're talking about the economy and employment prospects and making a living and such.

It's a bit tricky to come up with concrete examples on the spot, in particular because drawing a line around a given industry or type of work is largely subjective. I could point to blacksmithing and someone could object that we still have metalworkers. But we don't have individual craftsmen hammering out pieces anymore. Someone might still object that an individual babysitting a CNC machine is analogous but somehow it feels materially different to me.

Leather workers are another likely example. To my mind that's materially different from a seamstress, a job that itself has had large parts of the tasks automated.

Horses might be a good example. Buggies and carriages replaced by the engine. Most of the transportation counterparts still exist but I don't think mechanics are really a valid counterpart to horse tenders and all the (historic) economic activity associated with that. Sure a few rich people keep race horses but that's the sort of luxury I was referring to above. The number of related job positions is a tiny fraction of what it was historically and exists almost solely for the purpose of entertaining rich people.

Historically the skill floor only crept up at a fairly slow rate so the vast majority of those displaced found new sectors to work in. But the rate of increase appears to have picked up to an almost unbelievable clip (we're literally in the midst of redefining the roles of software developers of all things, one of the highest skilled "bulk" jobs out there). It should be obvious that if things keep up the way they've been going then we're going to hit a ceiling for humans as a species not so long from now.