What he hopes for is to just reduce the number of people they employ. So the "more people doing other types of jobs" just makes the message more palatable.
Suppose all companies follow the suite who is going to buy their crap?
There's no way that paying for a bunch of employees that you don't need, just so you can have some customers, is going to make sense. Even if you're operating a company town, only a fraction of their income is going to be spent on your company's goods/services, so you'll never be able to recoup the wage that way.
It seems obvious that many white collar workers today will have to do something involving physical labor at some point in the future.
I expect I will be facing this in my mid 50s. Really not ideal timing.
It's all in Adam Smith and economic history.