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There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates and masters not needing slaves. This would be if every machine could work by itself, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation.
As technology advances, robots become more complex and more capable of doing a greater variety of things - at a faster, better and more consistent rate than if a human were to perform the same task. When robots have achieved a level of capability that business owners buy them and replace their human employees, you have a Job Stealing Robot.
The Job Stealing Robot does not need to necessarily be a robot; a piece of software or other type of machine may do the trick. The point is that artificial constructs are being built and are replacing the old workforce.
An application of Technology Marches On and subtrope of Man Versus Machine. Overlaps with Ludd Was Right. When someone fights against the Job Stealing Robot, particularly when using questionable means, you're looking at an Evil Luddite. This type of plot is usually considered a Reactionary Fantasy, due to the fact that humans tend to triumph or compromise with machines by story's end.
Definitely Truth in Television: advances in computing, artificial intelligence, robotics have led to a lot of manual, analytical and office jobs being replaced or consolidated. Unless humans begin to augment themselves to match these machines' capabilities, there's little chance that man will dominate machine in an increasing amount of fields of competence.
While technically this would allow humans to free themselves from monotone tedious labor as productivity increases, making people displaced by robots benefit from robot-made goods would require a major overhaul of the economy, neccessitating political and social solutions, not merely technological. Many underground socio-political theorists and futurists do believe that, at some point before the middle of this century if technological progress is any indication, robots will indeed replace the vast majority of human jobs, effectively leading to a "Post-Capitalist" social order. While no one is quite sure of what exactly will that entail, this is bound to result in a net increase of humanity's prosperity - the question is whether everyone will be able to benefit from it or humanity would be divided into robot owners and everyone else.
Examples
Advertising
- There's an ad for Progressive insurance where spokeswoman Flo fears she'll be replaced by Flobot (who has since appeared with Flo and others in another ad).
Anime
- This is a pivotal plot point in Armitage III, due to the high employment rate of robots, on Mars. The human populace objects strongly sometimes violently to this and regularly hold public protests, to denounce robots and demand their jobs back.
Comics
- A common theme in Judge Dredd stories is citizens struggling to cope with mass unemployment caused by nearly all jobs being performed by robots.
- This trope sets up the series American Flagg. Actor Reuben Flagg, star of the hit TV show Mark Thrust: Sexus Ranger, gets replaced by his own Tromplographic™ Ink Suit Actor duplicate. He then gets drafted into the real Rangers and sent to Chicago, which is where the story begins.
Film
- I, Robot: Will Smith invokes this when proposing a new slogan for a robotics company: "Shitting on the Little Guy".
- Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. Bucket gets laid off from his job at a toothpaste factory after the Wonka candy bars contest causes an increase in toothpaste sales, letting the factory buy a machine. He gets a new job later: repairing the machine.
- According to The Matrix backstory, this is the reason humans started fighting the machines. Artificial Intelligence had evolved to a point where machines became better than humans at everything. Eventually, the humans started discriminating against the machines and kicked them out.
- In WarGames, the computer is used to replace human commanders in charge of missile silos. Leo McGarry glances significantly at the machine when he's being relieved by it. Although this isn't so much about lost jobs as it is about the increased risk of A Nuclear Error.
- in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Bill & Ted get killed and replaced by "evil robot us'es" which look exactly like Bill & Ted, but are programmed to be evil in order to destroy Bill & Ted's reputation so they don't become awesome rock stars and turn the world to peace. They fight back by recruiting an alien genius who builds "good robot us'es" capable of destroying the evil ones, even though they look like they were cobbled together from random appliances (they were). They also make for great backup dancers.
Literature
- A non-fiction book by Federico Pistono explaining technological unemployment is called Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK. Recently, it became available online for free,
 as a part of the author's decision to raise awareness of the issue and why it's likely to be a benefit in the log run.
- The novel Manna by Marshall Brain argues that robots would make efficient managers far faster than they would make efficient employees, creating a dystopia in which workers are still human but they are saddled with AI governing their every step.
- In Feet of Clay, Sgt Colon has a conversation with a wick-dipper who's been made redundant since the candle factory started employing a golem.
- The Caves Of Steel has people becoming unemployed due to robots being introduced by the Spacers. It is revealed to be part of a plan to create large numbers of unemployed people who will become a new wave of settlers.
- In I, Robot, most of the later stories taking place in space because organized labor ban robots from being used on Earth from fear of competition. However, robots eventually develop to the point that telling them apart from humans is impossible.
- Comes up in Galaxy Of Fear: The Doomsday Ship. It's a Star Wars book, so droids are everywhere, but it's noted that there are things they can't do which organic beings can. For one, droids are rarely able to exceed or surpass their programming; without extensive modification, most have trouble with things not closely related to what they're designed to handle. A prototype AI is being installed into a ship which is adaptable and can handle things its human crew does, to the resentment of its captain.
- The novel Invitation To The Game begins with young adults, freshly graduated from college, being relegated to a slum because robotic labor is more convenient. Two of the protagonists' friends got to go home to family businesses instead... only to arrive in the slum later because those were converting to robotic labor. Turns out the slum life is also to shape them into bands of True Companions for the titular Game, and the friends' family businesses were deliberately converted because this particular group was incomplete without those two friends.
Live-Action TV
- The Twilight Zone TOS episode "The Brain Center at Whipple's". A callous business executive replaces all of his workers with machines, putting them out of work. At the end, he suffers karmic justice as he is replaced by a computer.
- In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Ultimate Computer", Starfleet decides it's a great idea for a computer to replace Kirk as captain of the Enterprise. The computer goes evil, of course.
- WKRP in Cincinnati:
- In Yet Another Christmas Carol episode, Mr. Carlson is taken to the future, where he has replaced everyone at the station with computers except Herb (the sales manager).
- When another radio station tries to hire Venus away from WKRP, he learns that the entire station is automated; he'd be the Token Human on the air.
- An episode of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue features a scientist introducing a group of Robot Rangers. This leads to the Lightspeed Rangers out of work...until the robots malfunction.
- Total Recall 2070 had an episode about it, which mentions official regulations such as at least X% of workers being human.
- An episode of The Avengers had a small town taken hostage (with a nuke) by a general furious over being replaced with a machine.
- In The Wire union leader Frank Sobotka is horrified by the upcoming trend of mechanical automatization rendering stevedore manual labour obsolete.
Music
- The Clockwork Quartet's song "The Watchmaker's Apprentice" has the titular apprentice being replaced by a machine. In retaliation he rigs a watch to kill one of his master's customers, framing him for manslaughter and ruining his reputation.
Newspaper Comics
- This◊ Hi And Lois strip.
- Whats New With Phil And Dixie. In Dragon magazine #63 (July 1982) the strip had a robot Phil that was designed to replace the real Phil Foglio on the staff. Phil managed to defeat the robot by shorting him out with water, but then a robot Dixie appeared... Read it here.
Theatre
- In Elmer Rice's play The Adding Machine, white-collar slave Mr. Zero, hoping for a raise or promotion after twenty-five years of employment, is instead replaced by a machine that will do his job more efficiently.
Video Games
Web Original
- Red vs. Blue: 479er is clearly feeling very threatened by Delta, but calms down quickly when she discovers that he can't fly.
- Also, while not replacing her on the team or driving anyone out of the unit, Tex quickly takes Carolina's spot at the top of the Freelancer leaderboard. How much Carolina knew about Tex's artificial nature is not clear.
- Despair.com mentions this in some of its demotivators:
- Motivation: If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.
- Adaptation: The bad news is robots can do your job now. The good news is we're now hiring robot repair technicians. The worse news is we're working on robot-fixing robots—and we do not anticipate any further good news.
Webcomics
- Inverted in Warbot In Accounting: the titular warbot is a refrigerator-sized hunk of metal with a single crushing claw, meaning he is stunningly bad at typing, handling delicate objects, etc.
- Meta Inversion: The Comic Strip Robotman became Robotman And Monty, and then finally just Monty when Robotman was written out.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Mr. Burns has twice tried to replace all the workers at SNPP with robots. The first time is during a strike and the robots run amok. The second time Burns fires everyone (except Homer) and replace them with robots, which eventually...run amok. This time the unemployed and underemployed former SNPP workers come to his rescue, and he rehires them all.
- In another Simpsons episode, Stu & Marty (the radio DJs) are threatened to be replaced by a wisecracking computer if they don't make good on the promise of an elephant for Bart.
- An episode of The Lampies has a robot brought in to do everyone inside the lamps' jobs (including counting down the precise time to light up time and then turning on the lamps). He is soon taken out of commission after he activates the sprinklers and fries himself.
- There's an episode of Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi when robots replaced Ami and Yumi as rock stars..thankfully, they get their positions back.
- The Futurama episode Obsoletely Fabulous features Bender upset about being replaced by a better robot.
- In an episode of The New Fred & Barney Show, Fred's new robotic butler does such a good job at the quarry that Fred and Barney are no longer needed there.
- The Tale Spin episode "From Here to Machinery" featured robot pilots putting the regular cargo fliers out of business. The robot was ultimately revealed to have a critical flaw of only ever flying in a straight line, rendering it easy prey for air pirates.
- Subverted in Roughnecks Starship Troopers Chronicles: C.H.A.S. is presented as a hyper-competent Automaton, that can do the job of any trooper better than they can (much to their annoyance). After his Heroic Sacrifice to save Higgens, it is mentioned that the government decided that robots like C.H.A.S. were not cost-effective.
Other
- There's a joke about a guy who's laid off, as his boss tells him they've just bought a new robot that does everything he does, but better. The guy goes home and tells his wife... who goes and buys the same model of robot.
- French comedian Coluche had a skit about being laid off and replaced with a machine.
It does it as well as we did, if not better. Also, the machine doesn't need pay, doesn't need rest, doesn't need vacation, is never ill, and worst of all, doesn't even need a job!
Real Life
- This trope is contradicted by the "Luddite fallacy"; Even though a machine can do more work than a person, it doesn't mean that the company will employ fewer people—instead, the company may just produce more product for the same number of employees (of course, this still puts artisans out of a job in favour of technicians).
"If the Luddite fallacy were true we would all be out of work because productivity has been increasing for two centuries."
—Alex Tabarrok, Economist
- Walt Disney Studios was in financial straits after Sleeping Beauty didn't make its cost back, so Ub Iwerks adapted the xerography process to eliminate hand-inking. Not good for you if you worked in the Disney inking department.
- When Steven Spielberg started on Jurassic Park, he hired Tippett Studio to provide stop-motion effects for the film. However, Spielberg later saw a test with CGI dinosaurs and was so impressed with how realistic they looked that he decided to use CGI instead of stop-motion. Ultimately subverted as Tippett Studio's expertise at animating dinosaurs was still valuable and so a system was created where their stop-motion experience could be applied to the CGI models. Tippett Studio has specialized in CGI ever since.
- And on that same note, hand-painted movie posters falling by the wayside in favor of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and similar photomanipulation and computer art tools. Savvy artists simply applied their expertise to the new medium and modified the programs to fit their needs accordingly.
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