Well not to forget the one to two generations these job creations after a rush of automation took. And the massive social upheavals and massive societal problems they first brought.

From a 30.000 feet view, historically speaking you are not wrong. But sadly your comment glosses over the dirty details. But it is these dirty details that made life miserable for many people directly or indirectly affected and living through times of massive automation.

Yes. Their children and grandchildren often had a better chance of finding work. Often in a rather different society than their (grand)parents.

These global systems are complex and changing stuff is so too. I am not arguing against automation. But the current trend in job creation, at least in Europe, is that well paying jobs are being automated, while precarious jobs are being created. Currently it is primarily the owners of the automation (and shareholders) reaping the benefits, while society bears the costs/problems like precarious jobs, old people needing wellfare after having worked their whole lifes, young college graduates not being able to find high paying jobs to pay back their tuitions. And so on. I know my examples are not more than that. Singular examples and one could probably find counterexamples.

But I strongly believe that with automation we also need to think about distribution of the positive effects these automations generate on a societal level.

When agricultural production was largely automated, everyone benefited in the form of cheap, ubiquitous food supplies. People weren't out in fields doing grueling manual work just to eat. This has led to the lowest rate of extreme poverty ever recorded.

Similarly, when massive corporations of enormous scale have nearly entirely automated supply chains end-to-end then poor people receive massive benefits in kind. Those benefits are cheap goods and food and lower cost of living.

I don't buy your argument at a fundamental level. Agricultural automation lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. That, in itself, is a widely distributed positive effect of automation.

European societies vehemently vote in favor of massive welfare and high tax programs, so it's no surprise to me that massive brain drain and lack of innovation results. As a consequence, Europe has less of a need for well paying jobs.

Put it this way: European tech workers get absolutely screwed on salary. Swiss tech workers don't (in fact it's one of the highest paying countries after the US). Perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.

So your argument stays the same stating that billions (well not sure were they are coming from, without proper attribution of sources) were raised out of poverty.

So your argument is in favor of people should suffer now for future generations to profit. Or am I misreading you? And what about the impact of (to stay with your example) industrialized farming on the environment? Is this a net positive still if you factor in the externalities?

Even if I agree with your argument, you are comparing people living today (or some time after the industrialization of agriculture) with people living through these times and loosing their livelihood with the need to migrate to the cities and get precarious jobs. Something by the way that paved the way to the french revolution (probably a net positiv in the long run) and at least two massive wars in the 20th century as well as Maos regime (not so sure on the net benefits of that).

I am not sure what this part about "European societies vehemently vot[ing] in favor of massive welfare and high tax programs" has to do with any of this. Sounds more like an "ad hominem" to me as I am an European.

Also - as you are derailing the discussion, let me answer the second stream here as well:

> European tech workers get absolutely screwed on salary. Swiss tech workers don't (in fact it's one of the highest paying countries after the US). Perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.

Well. If I were to live in CH, my cost of living would at least tripple. Does my Salary account for that? Also Switzerland having a way smaller talent pool market forces dictate that salaries should increase - relatively regardless of the amount of taxes to pay. If there is no talent to be easily had one has to pay a premium for talent.

I for one (German citizen) am happy about some social netting covering my ae in case my company goes under.

I don’t think we’ve exactly automated agricultural production. Not yet, at least. We have mechanized and industrialized the farming process, of course. Tractors are guided by GPS. Machinery will harvest crops on a massive scale, but, some human labor is still required.

For a lot of the farming process, humans are still intricately involved in the process. I won’t consider it to be truly automated, until such point as when robots take over most of the work.