Whatever commoditized robots can produce is no longer profitable; rather, the production destroys capital.

Yesterday I discussed how robots only do work that's profitable, as any enterprise buying, programming and maintaining robots to do unprofitable work will soon be out of business.

What few observers seem to grasp is that automation goes through two distinct stages of profitability: when robots/automation first replace high-cost human workers, profits soar. Observers then draw projections based on the belief that these initial profits will continue essentially forever.

But this initial boost phase of profits gushing from automation is short-lived;as the tools of automation are themselves commoditized and become available to anyone on the planet with some capital and ambition, lower cost automated competitors come to market, destroying the pricing power of the first adopter.