The first part of this essay brought back a tidbit of history. When steam shovels started appearing in the construction industry, they were replacing 100 workers with three: operator, boilerman, and oiler. There was a societal backlash with all these men no longer employed, even though that manual work was not all that desirable.

You might be interested in "Manna," a fictional account of what we could do with displaced workers. My review is here:

https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=20&id=76