We programmers are kind of used to being on the top of the heap. As a category, we've received extremely high compensation for a while now, and it's natural for

We programmers are kind of used to being on the top of the heap. As a category, we've received extremely high compensation for a while now, and it's natural for those in such a position to feel some fear that automation will mean they're no longer able to demand a disproportionate amount of resources be allocated to them. But what we really should be doing is celebrating that we, too, may be able to join the ranks of those whom automation has liberated from having to work at something every day just to be allowed to continue to exist on this planet. The caveat, of course, is that we need to, collectively (and not just "collectively as programmers/techies", but "collectively with all the others whose jobs may be made unnecessary by automation") fight to make sure that we do get those benefits, and they aren't taken by the people who own the companies that made the automation. Remember, you and I have more in common with the infamous and widely-vilified homeless people on the streets of San Francisco than we do with people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Even if you're making $150k, $200k...even $1M/yr, you are closer in income to the poorest of the poor than you are to someone making even $1B/yr, let alone the tens of billions that those modern robber barons make. We need to start acting like it, and recognizing that we are better together, joined to improve humanity as a whole, than we are separately, stepping on each other in a desperate scramble to increase our personal slice of the pie.