The goal of technology is to eliminate labor, not to create the need for more of it. If everyone is fishing with their bare hands and catching just enough to feed themselves (edit: say one fish), then when nets are invented and people can catch 100 fish a day, 99% of the fishing industry jobs disappear. That's a wonderful thing. That means 99% of the population can devote themselves to less urgent priorities, like building shelters, making clothes, etc. Sure, those crackerjack fish catchers who could catch 2 or 3 fish a day have lost their jobs, and might become less affluent than they were...but the few losers in every industry when technology changes the employment structure are outweighed by the vast majority who benefit greatly. And lest this seem unfair, consider that if everyone's current job were obsolete, everyone would be astoundingly better off despite losing the comparative advantage they had built in their career.
The same thing has been happening since the first inventions. It's been one long history of job loss and rising standard of living, and no short term variance should obscure this fact.
The more jobs made obsolete, the better. People will simply shift to less important work, and increasingly people will simply work fewer hours, as technology makes the economy so productive that prices fall to such a degree that people can live on an hour of labor a week.
And that's...good. Shops are only good to have in your town insofar as they let you buy stuff more easily and cheaply. As soon as they no longer served that purpose, the labor and real estate was being wasted. Now that those businesses have shut down, the real estate is available for more productive uses and the workers are free to do something that is more useful to society. Your locality is that much better off for it, especially the poorest people, since they can obtain goods and services more cheaply.
The same thing has been happening since the first inventions. It's been one long history of job loss and rising standard of living, and no short term variance should obscure this fact.
The more jobs made obsolete, the better. People will simply shift to less important work, and increasingly people will simply work fewer hours, as technology makes the economy so productive that prices fall to such a degree that people can live on an hour of labor a week.