[jack-r-abbit]

Right now there is a gap between cost of human labor and cost of automation. When automation becomes cheaper than human labor, it will make more economical sense to switch to automation. Even if you stick with only automation getting cheaper, the gap is still closing. But with the cost of human labor also increasing, the gap is just closing even faster. It is not reasonable to think we can slow the decreasing cost of automation as that is just the nature of technology at scale. But we have absolute control over the cost of human labor. Every time we vote for a minimum wage increase we are choosing to increase the cost of human labor. If this is the choice we make then we can't really complain about the effect it has.

[rm_-rf_slash]

That is a good point. One of the reasons historians tend to claim as to why the industrial revolution occurred in 18th century Britain and not Ptolemeic Egypt (where there is evidence of machines like steam engines) is that ancient Egyptian labor was cheap, which meant more profits for ruling classes while the people had jobs.

It is worth noting that Egyptian prominence is directly due to the abundant resources of the Nile, and presumably, with technology displacing natural abundance, there could certainly be more for everybody. Famines are more often a result of policy, and rarely because food is so scarce that no-one can eat (ex: Ireland and India under British rule)