"If the sink can autonomously diagnose the leak, anyone can be a plumber."
I think you're underestimating the skills required to be a plumber. If the leak was due to a corroded drain pipe, would you be able to replace it? Do you know how to seal a joint between two pipes so that it doesn't leak? What if the fitting at the bottom of the sink was corroded and you had to replace the entire sink? Moving on to more difficult plumbing tasks: What if your gas-fired water heater had to be replaced? What if your toilet was backing up because you had roots in your sewer line? Do you happen to own all the tools and supplies you'd need? And in the unlikely event that you did have all the skills and equipment to do all these things, what percentage of the population do you think would have similar skills? My guess is that plumbers will have job security for a long, long time to come.
One of the fun things about having fully automated production systems (like, say, a tile kiln) and fully automated data processing systems (say, scanning 2,000 stock market releases per day and tracking 1.5 million mining leases every 3 days) is you can take the time to do your own landscaping (80 acres), your own plumbing (two soak wells, three pumps, three gravity tanks, ~5 km piping, three waste separation/settling tanks & leach drain system).
The only external assistance required to doing all that is getting a qualified tradesman in to sign off on the work already completed & to do the final official hookup (for gas & mains power).
Hereabouts (Western Australia), outside a city, the percentage of the population that can do that would be most of the men and a good percentage of the women.
Hell, some of use can even write compilers & OS's & do flash stuff with wavelets and what not.
Sometimes I feel like a country hick, then I read comments like yours and realise how sadly urbanised many people are.
In the past month, I have run wire for a bedroom in my basement, replaced a kitchen faucet, replaced a garbage disposal, replace an exterior mirror on a car (teenagers and garages don't go well together :) and replaced the ice maker in my freezer. In the past, I've replaced almost every piece of my nearly 20 year old dryer and some of the pieces of the matching washing machine.
With all that, I still feel like I haven't go a clue what I'm doing, but it sure feels good when you get something completed.
These things are really not that hard. They just take some tools and some time.
I could learn plumbing, but I choose not to. It's not interesting to me. Not everyone is like you; in fact, I'd guess the majority are more like me in that respect. So regardless of the fact that plumbers may eventually disappear in Western Australia, that's a regional quirk if anything.
I think you're underestimating the skills required to be a plumber. If the leak was due to a corroded drain pipe, would you be able to replace it? Do you know how to seal a joint between two pipes so that it doesn't leak? What if the fitting at the bottom of the sink was corroded and you had to replace the entire sink? Moving on to more difficult plumbing tasks: What if your gas-fired water heater had to be replaced? What if your toilet was backing up because you had roots in your sewer line? Do you happen to own all the tools and supplies you'd need? And in the unlikely event that you did have all the skills and equipment to do all these things, what percentage of the population do you think would have similar skills? My guess is that plumbers will have job security for a long, long time to come.