So you have a basis for this assertion behind hand waving? If companies didn’t need those folks, they wouldn’t hire them. They hire them, because automation technology is nowhere even approaching good enough to maintain our quality of life without extensive human labor. It’s as simple as that.
> If companies didn’t need those folks, they wouldn’t hire them.
Precisely - the issue is that this is a flawed voting mechanism.
I have more money than most people in the UK. There are a whole host of reasons for that - some hard work, but a lot of them essentially random/arbitrary.
As a result, I have the power to hire people if I so choose. In a smaller sense you're doing that any time you spend money.
But in an unequal society, that means that the majority of decisions end up being made by a small elite.
What does voting have to do with anything? Companies as a general rule don’t hire employees they don’t need. The fact that we hire all of these people in service jobs is evidence that the automation alternatives simply aren’t adequate.
I think your confusion here stems from the fact that you're talking about automation vs. non-automation, e.g. whether a person or a robot does a specific job.
I'm talking about the jobs that actually get done. Not every task that a human (or robot) performs as labour is essential. For the most part, the human ends up doing the thing that pays them the most.
It's not necessarily the case that the thing that pays them the most is best for society.
Imagine that, for example, building video games and being a nurse are both non-automatable tasks and both have no upper bound.
Let's assume building video games is a higher paying job.
It's not necessarily the case that a person who can do both should do that. It may be in their own interest and the interest of their employer but not wider society.
