When I think about it, it is the cycle of property ownership, taxation and welfare which makes it most difficult for people to adapt to these seismic changes in the world.

In most countries, property ownership is restricted by government - you cannot just pick a plot and erect a house, workshop, factory etc. There are regulations; you have to purchase land, you have taxes to pay. If you could just get started on the next available plot of land you would have plenty more options available, including whether you worked (for a wage or salary) or not. Which brings us on to the next point...

In most countries, if you work or not you get taxed. Where you live, what you buy gets taxed. If you didn't have to pay a tax on where you lived or what you bought you would have plenty more options available. This then leads on to the next point...

Because you have to pay for a place to live and are taxed to live there, and are also taxed on the things you buy - therefore, if you lose your job then in most cases you're going to need some sort of welfare to pay for these things in order to survive. Alternatively, you could be lucky enough (so far) to not have been automated out of your job... yet... but several million others have, and they have to pay for somewhere to live, the taxes for where they live and for other things in their lives from food, clothes to whatever else.

If none of these financial burdens existed then you would have plenty more options available, you could, for example, simply not work for a while, develop new skills, test out some new strategies for making money or just live entirely self sufficiently. That choice would be yours. And given enough time you would realise that the automation that replaced your dreary, repetitive 9-5 job was not such a bad thing after all.

Would I worry that this would cause all people to give up work, that things would no longer function, that society would collapse? No, not at all. If some or many did give up work, fair enough, that should be their choice. However, if they got fed up with their lot then nobody should be expected to have what they've created or worked for taken away from them to support that lifestyle. That would then incite them to return to work or automate some task so that they didn't have to go back to work.

Alternatively, if the owners of a business which automated its production wanted to give away any products philanthropically then that should be their choice. And no doubt such a generous act would give them a feeling of satisfaction that money as itself couldn't.

The fact is that humans as a species have an infinite array of wants and desires, and whether the driver behind human action is creativity, money, prestige, power, hunger or whatever else - change happens. All it takes is one person to look at something they're presented with on a daily basis to imagine a simpler way of doing that thing to make their or other people's lives easier, to free up more time to do what they really want to do, and not before long they have a product that they can have produced (perhaps at first through human labour and then later by automation) that makes more people's lives easier and at the same time gives the creator more money, prestige, power, and further diminishes their chances of experiencing hunger.

Automation has often been portrayed as an enemy to our well-being, but that's probably because outwith of having a job you are burdened by pressures that are beyond what nature has evolved us to cope with. All things being equal, we are capable of thinking, organizing and carrying out tasks. However, if we can be made homeless, destitute, reliant on handouts or made to feel shameful of our existence because we're no longer part of the tax paying pool of labour then what can we be expected to achieve? That's not to say that some can't rebound from such a situation dramatically, but most can't. But is automation the guilty party, or as I mentioned above, are other factors at play?

The fact is that automation - removing ourselves from the direct hands-on work of physical labour (and as technology progresses, more mental labour) - makes our lives easier, simpler, more efficient, more productive and cleaner; whereas standing in the way of automation means our lives remain more difficult, more complex, less efficient, less productive, and less clean.

One thing that I'm often reminded about when the topic of automation arises is that the ancient Greeks knew how to harness steam power... they used it to automate the entrances to temples, they even knew how to automate machines (curiosities for the rich, i.e., toys). They knew how to build rudimentary steam trains. They could have built steam trains and ushered in the industrial revolution.

But they didn't.

And why not...

Because they thought "why bother when you're surrounded by slaves"?