I’m sorry I am not trying to dispute the spirit of your respose but I have to disagree, freight trains are thousands of feet long and haul unbelievably large quantities of material, the idea that it is inefficient to have a human (really a pair of humans) oversee and be responsible for a machine that large is laughable honestly.
…so is the idea that there is a genuine shortage of people willing to work as conductors, it is a convenient lie companies tell to rationalize why nobody wants to work for them because they pay shit and respect their employees so little that they won’t even give them unpaid time for necessary doctors appointments (see recent action of US train workers).
This point is even more true for passenger trains.
It is a massive responsibility we can afford to pay two humans to do it, a certain micro amount of inefficiency is ok.
What makes comedy and art in general good is when it torpedoes simple reductive narratives and leaves behind chaotic, nuanced and existential truths.
I heard someone describe the existentialist humor of their irish friends as being a joke framework where the original context and framing of the joke is utterly obliterated or trivialized by the end of the joke, and I think that is a good lens to diagnose why conservatives are largely incapable of making good comedy.
Conservativism is the antithesis of existentialism, it attempts through any means necessary to cement specific narratives in the minds of the audience and prevent the framing of those narratives from being examined or questioned.
Conservative art is just an even lamer version of advertisement, it is simply a narrative being presented for the audience to believe. There is no substance or free spirit to conservative humor that allows the exploration or creation of anything new. All that conservative art does in the realm of symbols and meaning is point at the correct ones and say “we will hurt you if you tell any other story than this”.
The ONLY two things conservative humor is capable of doing by design are punching down at stereotypes for laughs and pretending like saying mean weird thoughts that randomly pop into your head from kneejerk reactions without considering whether it might hurt others or not is edgey rather than a selfish pushback to being told your views are hateful trash.