Henry Ford wiped out the buggy makers, blacksmiths, cartwrights, wheelwrights, stableboys and etc.
It is easy to characterize us as neo-Luddites, but I think we are reaching a point in history where machines are becoming an all too real threat to human life and human happiness.
I have been posting a thread on another website for about a decade detailing how robots will eventually be used as efficient killing machines by the powers that be. I link to news articles featuring some latest advancement in robot or energy weapon development, and it has become a quite frightening array of advances in technology.
But this is only the war fighting aspect of what technology is doing. This economic end of things promises to render us powerless without the need to fire a shot.
Machines are going to render many human jobs obsolete. They are already wrecking hell out of the lawyer industry, and they will eventually start eroding human participation in the medical industry.
Labor robots are not that far away.
We are shortly going to see a period where humans become to a large extent, superfluous. What jobs they do will eventually be done better and cheaper by machines, and whoever owns the machines will have complete control over the means of production.
And then what will the people do? Welfare existence? (till the rulers tire of it anyway.)
All of those jobs were doomed by Eli Whitney. Some just hung around until Ford finished them off. If it hadn't been Ford, it would have been someone else.
Yup. (Was going to post something similar but you beat me to it.)
I have an Amazon company and am about to start a new one. There would be no way I could do that without Amazon’ fulfilling our products. They do all of the warehousing and shipping. I would have to own a warehouse. Glad to be a part of it.