My father was a machinist for 25 years, then went into education for trade skills programs. One thing he tirelessly hit on with anyone who would listen was the mid to long term impact of the erosion of manufacturing and trade skills in America. This erosion was due in part to economics, raising kids to eschew blue collar jobs, and finally automation. Indeed, one of his later projects while still a machinist at Eveready Battery was working on automated production lines. His point relating to automation, other than the fact that not everything can or necessarily needs to be automated, was that automation still requires skilled labor, and in his experience, abandoning the next generation of workers results in a crisis of competency and ingenuity. Attrition of a workforce to install, maintain, improve, and integrate machines is a recipe for disaster down the line. Attrition of experts in systems and processes means we will have trouble innovating and reacting to changes in the world, and increases our reliance on black boxes– which provide the same capabilities to your competitors, by the way– and the jackals that sell them to us. My father was not opposed to automation; in fact, he appreciated that it sometimes made his job safer, or more productive, or less strenuous. However, he watched delusional and myopic managers with dollar signs floating in their eyes chasing their tails relentlessly for more and more automation with fewer and fewer people with the knowledge, skill, and responsibility to clean up their constant messes and keep the thing running.<p>No one gives a shit about Gumroad, but I fear similar problems in this industry at large. We have entered a time when we all feed from the same exorbitantly expensive, increasingly less nutritious, thin, gray gruel and will be fucked when the tap it comes from clogs or gets shut off.