Even if you strip out the profit motive, you still have huge amounts of skilled human labor
The profit motive is reflected more in terms of keeping high revenue producing processes inefficient to justify higher profits with the same margin. Medicine is replete with examples of processes that can be dramatically more efficient and widely available, but are not optimized because it reduces profits by reducing gross revenues. High margins invite scrutiny, high revenues invite investment.
It is similar to the California energy market, where electric providers are fixed, and rates are set by the sate on a cost plus basis. It should be no surprise that electricity production costs are multiple times higher than other states if manufacturer profit is capped at 8%.
Its not entirely clear such tailored processes can be easily automated.
I don’t know it needs to be industrialized to the extent producing ibuprofen is, but I’m not as bearish that individualized medicine can’t be industrialized and done at scale - especially if aspects of the tailoring can be programmable. Even if it’s not now - as scale increases, maybe technology meets that?
By the way you can in fact get tailored clothes produced through automation. Shoes, pants, shirts. There are products that will scan your body shape and an automated process produces a custom fit for you. They’re slightly more expensive, but I think the sales process is cumbersome and they never took off vs big box of throw away ill fitting garbage to cover our body with and throw away. That’s more a sad statement of modern culture than a limitation of our ability to automate and industrialize.
