It's arguably "right" at a macro, species POV and ruthless at a micro POV. Logically speaking, if we refused to progressively improve how we perform tasks, we'

It's arguably "right" at a macro, species POV and ruthless at a micro POV. Logically speaking, if we refused to progressively improve how we perform tasks, we'd be cave men. Improvement (and automation is of course a part of this) happens naturally by virtue of competitive market dynamics. In this environment, it's arguably morally irresponsible for a company to not rely on automation, because it's facing a trade-off between laying off some fraction of its labor pool now or going out of business altogether later. Therefore, the correct decision is always to improve towards greater competitive efficiency, not just for the benefit of shareholders but less obviously also for employees, in the aggregate. Competitive efficiency is also good for society. Governments are supposed to protect people from this problem, in my opinion. I think the behavior of the US government (and most others I imagine), in allocating the vast majority of taxpayer dollars to military spending and skyrocketing medical costs due to poor regulation, instead of education, infrastructure, social safety, and retraining, is what's truly morally irresponsible. There's a whole rabbit hole of thinking down that way as well (e.g. corporate lobbying is obviously a huge part of the problem and thus in some ways we come full circle). Oh and wrt UBI and the looming AI/robotics crisis, yea we're screwed.