Bankless · Monday, August 31, 2026
Shahin Farshchi argues that automation, contrary to some fears, does not lead to higher unemployment. He posits that cheap labor is the true threat to jobs, while automation tends to create more numerous, higher-quality jobs with greater worker satisfaction. Companies like Formic are already demonstrating this by providing robots as a service to clients struggling to find workers.
“And economies who do not automate tend to suffer from more unemployment. So that's been the general trend. And so I would say that the enemy here of both labor and jobs, as well as automation, is cheap labor.”
“And the observation that I've had is that when you automate, yes, you may be displacing jobs, but you are disproportionately creating higher quality jobs where you have less churn, where you have greater worker satisfaction.”
“And what they've actually experienced is creating more and more jobs that are higher quality that do not suffer from the worker dissatisfaction and the churn that they experienced prior to adopting automation.”