The whole point of the economy is to allocate our scarce resources in the way that maximises the benefit to society. Automation is a way of reducing costs; it

The whole point of the economy is to allocate our scarce resources in the way that maximises the benefit to society. Automation is a way of reducing costs; it is a way of making our scarce resources go farther. On the micro level, it is a Kaldor-Hicks improvement [0]. This means that there are winners (all of society because goods are cheaper) and losers (people who have lost their jobs) - but, overall, there is a net gain. We can tax some portion of this net gain (e.g, with income tax, or corporation tax if you are really worried about foreigners) and compensate the losers (with training so they can be employed in a different industry). In many ways, the "arguments" people have against automation are similar to those against immigration, and are befallen by the same fallacies. The difference is that we don't have to give robots health care. We already have a nice case study on rapid automation (and how the sky didn't fall in) - just look at the Luddites. My main concern with current levels of automation is that, with patents and network effects, we are creating a new generation of monopolies (Google, Facebook, Uber, AirBnB) with very little oversight. [0] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kaldor–Hicks_efficiency https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kaldor–Hicks_efficiency