<<<<Human labor is quickly becoming the equivalent of the horse in a world full of tractors.>>>>

On the subject of Productivity at the Macro level, there’s a book of epic contrarian view on the subject. Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth”- a short summary is below.

The golden century 1870-1970 was a monumental one for productivity. The period 1970-now, not so much and especially in contrast. There’s been all kinds of consumer excess from the Information and Communication technology (ICT) but it hasn’t matched the productivity of the golden century. Techno-optimists would like to project that things like AI will be like, say, electricity in terms of societal impact. That remains to be seen. The third Industrial Revolution of ICT has little to show for, let alone the so-called fourth IR. Cool, yes, productive, no!