Rubenerd

Never read comments. But if you do, these are the most common responses to articles about work automation:

1. Increased automation at the expense of workers is good or inevitable, because workers have priced themselves out of the market with negotiations, unions, or minimum wages.

2. Lost jobs will be made up for in other industries.

3. Welfare support, or a universal basic income, will make people lazy.

It seems to me you can’t hold these views concurrently. Not everyone losing a job to automation will be able to work building or maintaining robots. And you can’t blame people for needing income assistance if work is disappearing. Well, you can, but it’s entirely unproductive.

I wish this could be discussed maturely – like so many things – without it automatically devolving into a living example of Poe’s Law, too.