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You really only have a choice between buying the widget making machine or going into the custom widget business. Assuming there is no custom widget market to speak of, you really have no choice. If you don't buy a widget machine, you won't be able to compete when your competitors drop wholesale prices to reflect their lower costs due to their widget machines.
If widgets are simple--perhaps identical to a common 16-penny nail--this exercise was completed almost 200 years ago. If widgets are more complex--perhaps identical to the vehicles many people drive--the decisions were mostly made a generation ago. If widgets are artistic or custom--perhaps identical to dress shoes--the decision is whether to go the high-end craft route or to buy the machine.
It is inevitable, we're moving toward black-box manufacturing of everything that can be mass-produced. Other than maintenance of the black-boxes, factories will be fully automated. Manufacturing will not be the occupation of the middle class of the future. If there is going to be a middle class, there will need to be something else. It is possible that craftmanship, artistry, and "white collar" jobs will expand, but I'm guessing we'll be flailing for generations to come to grips with a labor change that in many ways is more profound than the industrial revolution. As always, it will be the middle class that takes the big hit. Eventually, we'll be a bit like Star Trek, in that value will not come primarily from things but from ideas and skills. Although, I don't think it will be a money-free society. We'll still pay for skills (doctors, entertainers, teachers) and those with the most marketable skills will be able to use those advantages to get commodities and things (land, art, etc.) that are finite and non-manufacturable.
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