I can remember a Milton Friedman story about India. He went to a construction site and asked the foreman why the workers were using shovels when they could be using an earth-mover. The foreman responded that it permitted more people to have jobs. Friedman then asked, “Why don’t you have them use teaspoons?”
In a lot of places it’s cheaper to hire 100 guys with shovels than to buy or rent heavy machinery, build a road and move it there, buy fuel and move it there, and run it.
Interestingly enough, China has some of the highest state of the art manufacturing facilities with automation out the wazzzooooo.