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Comment by jon_richards | Hacker News Reader

Horses used to be used for practically everything. The first commercial steam engine pumped water from mines and was measured in "horsepower", the the rate at which a horse could continuously pump water. Then steam engines replaced freight hauling. Then personal transport. Don't see many working horses now.

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Don't see many horses at all. That is, the offspring of those working horses certainly doesn't roam about in pastures, to pursue happiness because there are no jobs that require them.

I've read here that the obsolete horses helped bootstrap the pet food industry...

That was not something I needed to know.

In Pursuit of Honor (1995)

> The movie follows the plight of the officers as they attempt to save the animals that the Army no longer needs as it modernizes toward a mechanized military.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113399/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Pursuit_of_Honor

Are you implying that human population could ultimately decline, because of AI and automation ? If so, why is that undesirable.

Some believe that a human life has intrinsic value, even outside the value of the species as a whole and even outside the value of that human's labour.

True, but some believe that population growth has to stabilise at some point.

It is stabilizing already, natality in developing countries dropped much faster than what was expected.

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