If that does occur I'd take it as a sign of some serious problems with social order. More efficient production should see gains for everyone, but a look at the last thirty years suggests otherwise.
If you look at industries with an irreducible reliance on labour (eg medicine, law) then productivity has surged through the accumulation of capital. Programmers today can achieve in minutes what used to take years, because of the accumulation of software and faster hardware.
This leads to the paradoxical situation that as a percentage of GDP, those irreducible-labour sectors begin to loom larger and larger.
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If that does occur I'd take it as a sign of some serious problems with social order. More efficient production should see gains for everyone, but a look at the last thirty years suggests otherwise.
If you look at industries with an irreducible reliance on labour (eg medicine, law) then productivity has surged through the accumulation of capital. Programmers today can achieve in minutes what used to take years, because of the accumulation of software and faster hardware.
This leads to the paradoxical situation that as a percentage of GDP, those irreducible-labour sectors begin to loom larger and larger.
Correction: industries without an irreducible reliance on labour haven't seen productivity surges.