I think the vast majority of our society would function just fine if ~10% of the populace worked a 40 hour week. EX: When you go to fill up your tank you don't need anyone inside that store, a few vending machines for snacks and drinks would work just fine.
As a thought experiment labor costs go up 10fold which jobs stop happening and which ones become more automated. You could dramatically reduce the distance the average trucker drives by using trains. Small farms suck from a labor standpoint. There is little reason a person needs to make the coffee at Starbucks. Romba style machines can clean vacuum. Bathrooms can be designed and built to be automatically cleaned. etc.
IMO, low skilled human labor is still cheep, but a change in the cost of human labor would soon see a huge shift.
I think you're wrong... by about twenty years, give or take quite a bit and highly variable depending on exactly what we're talking about.
We can't quite have robotic truck drivers... but we're actually getting reasonably close. We can't quite automate a gas station... but we are getting reasonably close. We can't quite automate a fast-food joint (one of my personal favorite robotic bellwethers), but we're getting within sight of that possibility.
That's why I left open the possibility that this will change in the future. Right now society still requires us to all work, but we're getting within spitting distance of that not being true. Now, that's going to be an economic disruption on par with the industrial revolution, and I'd say we're actually on the early part of that curve, because the first industries to feel this are the ones most easily Internet-able...
How did you go from reduce the distance the average trucker drives by using trains to We can't quite have robotic truck drivers. A fairly limited 100MPH train network could dramatically reduce the distance and time it takes to deliver most shipments. Long hall trucking says more about our broken train system than how useful it is.
We have automated gas stations 95% of the time I show up pump my gas and go. There was a time when when a guy would pump your gas but that cost more so people where fine without that. As to Oil, and Tire pressure, my car senses them while I am driving. I don't even need directions due to GPS. Other than cleaning the bathrooms what do do we need someone in the gas station for? O yea, the station does not want to add cash machines to each of the pumps. (I suspect this is because when people are waiting to pay for their gas they are more likely to buy something else.)
IMO, we are already at the point in the US where most people's job's are redundant. But, as the need for people to do stuff drops off the cost of human labor also drops. The human greeter at Wallmart is a great example of this as their job could be done by a sign, OK they also cut down on shoplifters.
Some interpolation. Cutting humans out by 50% has a surprisingly small effect because we've got most of the low-hanging fruit there and you end up with other human costs getting in the way.
You've got to drop them to 0 to really matter.
"We have automated gas stations 95% of the time I show up pump my gas and go."
But there's a guy in the store, and it's going to take a lot of work to get him/her out. The rest of the stuff you mentioned is low-hanging fruit long plucked, and getting the rest of the way there takes a lot of stuff.
"The human greeter at Wallmart is a great example of this as their job could be done by a sign, OK they also cut down on shoplifters."
Cutting down on shoplifting is their primary job; greeters are secondary. Also, to the extent that greeters make people feel more at home and more likely to spend, that's something nothing but a human is going to accomplish.
I think the vast majority of our society would function just fine if ~10% of the populace worked a 40 hour week.
It may not be obvious why hiring a cashier to run your gas station is better than buying a credit card reader and a vending machine, but the reason is there somewhere.
There's a continuing search for cost effective replacements for human labor, and when we figure one out, it gets used.
We had several fully automated no-attendant gas stations in my town a few years ago. They're all shut down now.
As a thought experiment labor costs go up 10fold which jobs stop happening and which ones become more automated. You could dramatically reduce the distance the average trucker drives by using trains. Small farms suck from a labor standpoint. There is little reason a person needs to make the coffee at Starbucks. Romba style machines can clean vacuum. Bathrooms can be designed and built to be automatically cleaned. etc.
IMO, low skilled human labor is still cheep, but a change in the cost of human labor would soon see a huge shift.