So I used to work in industrial automation, and I did see a factory owner buy a robot to automate a task because it was a brain meltingly simple task that was unpopular with his workers. The robot was slower, and more expensive than a human.

It was taking a small piece of metal from a stack and putting it in a machine and pushing a button (not sure if he had a two-hand-no-tie-down set up) then taking the now bent piece of metal out of the machine and putting it on a stack. I think they had about 8 hours production per week of demand for the part.

He didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart but because he got tired of paying recruiters to find people willing to do it.

I have neighbours homeschooling their kids, that ate similarly aged to mine. Sometimes we see them at the school playground on the weekend. The kids seem fine, the parents seem normal. They mentioned they take the kids to a weekly home school kids play date, and there is some sort of education resource worker that makes sure the kids are learning what they need to.

I thought we were an autonomous collective.