Thankyou for starting this post Hedge_87. You have to be fairly clever to get a degree, but those who are really clever simply automate the economy, and live like ladies and gentlemen of leisure on machine effort. The Automation Revolution of the fifties and sixties, sometimes known as the Second Industrial Revolution, was not a time when automatic machines emerged in any numbers; it was a time of enlightenment, when scientists became aware that the laws of nature actually allow automatic control.
We will never have compete automation of course, but aristocracies throughout history have known that many nobles just live comfortably on their rents, and a few gifted nobles work hard in high levels of government or business.
My body is a miniature automatic economy. I am not hungry, but I eat a biscuit. My blood sugar goes up, and my body converts glucose to glycogen until blood sugar becomes what it should be. All automatic, I do not have to push buttons or pull levers. Later, my blood sugar goes down, and my body automatically breaks glycogen down to glucose, until my blood sugar again becomes what it should be.
There are no little demons with degrees having careers keeping my body going. In the long run, much the same will happen with advanced economies. It is amazing the number of college graduates who do not understand these matters. It reminds me of a senior German army officer about 1900, who received new graduates from officer college every year. He put them into four categories; clever and lazy, clever and industrious, stupid and lazy, stupid and industrious. He regarded clever and lazy as the best, and stupid and industrious as the worst.
On another note, you mentioned the physical nature of your work. In Australia, I have seen linesmen with trucks which have a cherry picker permanently mounted on the back. I imagine this must take the effort out of climbing up and down power poles.