Ask Lemmygrad

I think a good comparison to make here would be the industrialization under the French Ancien regime and the late Qing dynasty. Or more specifically the lack there of. With mass automation, the capitalist system would fail and collapse for numerous reasons. Ergo, in order to preserve itself, the system would delay the transfer to automation the best it could and also put in quotas and such to prevent automation from becoming the dominant economic factor.

This actually is parallelled in the doctor who episode KABLAM, where an entire moon is dedicated to what is basically and amazon warehouse. A quota of 10% of workers had to be real people, despite the fact that automation was much better. However, the workers were paid pittances and treated horribly, because why wouldn't they be? (What's the funniest thing is that the writers think this is...good? Like, the whole system is effed up and the writers are all like "oh wow isn't this so cool guys." It's hilarious.)