&#62;Your uncle now has the much easier job of cleaning out the meters, rather than running around all day. And maybe someone gets a skilled-labor job as a parking meter repairman?<p>But there are <i>fewer</i> jobs available in this situation in aggregate.  This is a problem with several criticisms of automation that I have seen in liberal and libertarian circles - they claim that automation does not decrease the number of workers since workers are needed to deal with the automation.  Apparently they are totally innumerate, since while new jobs are created servicing the automation, the total number of jobs is significantly reduced.