he point was that people were fine with people being phased out of the work force for different kinds of labor up until recently, but have a different standard now when it comes to their jobs...
The point was not that artists didn't depict the struggles of coal miners in the early 1900s...
The why singling out artists:
I don't remember artists lamenting coal miners being phased out
Of course society at large doesn’t give a fuck, like a ton of awful corpo practices. I’m not going to pretend I do that much either…
But to me is really gross to try to justify it with “is progress like street lamps” because people here have low opinion of artists.
I’m not going into rare minerals threads and just say “those child slaves have it coming” because I like my IPhone (neither go “you fucking monsters with your phones”). The world is more complicated than that.
I don't have a low opinion of artists. Quite the opposite really.
However, to use one of the earlier examples, I do not consider someone making low res background textures an "artist". They're the artistic equivalent of a production line worker.
For example, I can buy a kitchen knife from a factory production line or I can buy a custom made knife from an artisan knifemaker. The person running the production line and the person running the forge are not the same. If the factory automates its line and that person loses their job, that's sad for that person, but nothing of artistic value was lost.
Edit: Certain aspects of my own industry are somewhat under threat from AI, but that's what happens. People who write clickbait listicles and SEO bait will likely have some or all of their work taken by AI generated content production. However, the higher value work that I generally do in my job will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to replace.