You live in New York in the year 1893. The Industrial Revolution has long arrived but instead of being excited about the new prospects, you are panicking. Your job involves shoveling horse shit from the streets and everybody is getting a car.

Unemployment looms!

Society will collapse!

Right?

This post is a response to Why I Believe The Upcoming Mass Automation Movement Has The Potential To Start A Class War by @calaber24p . I believe the author is being (to say the least) negatively sensational. You see, a horse-shit-shoveling-mind would not have foreseen, lets say, the car sticker industry that would come along. The new industries that automation would bring are equally unfathomable. Even if I told you in the early 1990's that there would be a job involving a massive online industry called "Social Media Manager" you would think that I am taking H.G.Wells novels way too seriously.

Chillax

it is understantable to picture dystopias in time of change. With the rise of Hollywood, apocalyptic scenarios are often confused with reality. The news sell fear and panic. It's what they do. They just have a different front name called "news". People are glued on screens feeding on trash that industries hype in order to make a profit. As if that was not enough, your hypothalamus, lying in the center of your brain enjoys stability. When something new pops up it tries to find excuses for boycotting. It is hard to fight our insticts but often this is the only path to sanity.

Let's examine @calaber24p 's fears in brief:

The amount of jobs created by the automation field would be far less than would be needed to replace the jobs it is destroying

Never in history has ever this occured. With every new innovation the amount of jobs created was exponentially greater than before. Moreover the jobs being lost often wiped old industries only to give birth to new ones. Keep in mind that since 1955 only 12% of S&P 500 companies survive until today when compared to 50 years ago.

Today every garage is a potential start-up. Companies pop-up everywhere. People are shifting towards freelancing and self employment rather than working for someone else. Automation will not only bring less week hours for everyone (already implemented in Sweden) but it will also allow a greater social stability

The Best Time In History

The country is eventually going to get split into the rich and the poor. The middle class is going to disappear almost entirely.

When we compare livelihood tables from any time in human history we see that life expenctacy has tripled. People forget what poverty meant back in the day. Most kids were dying in the streets from simple illnesses. Food was scarse. Today even unemployed people in western countries are morbidly obese. You can buy a meal from McDonalds with $1 and the only thing you have to complain about is how "healthy" it is. Children living during 1800's will find our modern concerns insane.

More and more people are being fed today thanks to automation. Poverty had declined massively. Even if there is a seemingly high unemployent rate in some countries, people are able to afford basic necessities when compared to any time in the past. How many protesters have you seen back in 1960 also holding cameras that worth one month's salary? There is an excellent presenation from @HansRosling that explains with data where we have been and where we are heading in regards to our livelihood across the entire planet. No need for pessimistic speculations.
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Welcome our Robot Overlords

When a knife was invented in a primitive cave 1.4 million years ago surely a political correct caveman would have protested about the "dangers of the knife". We often forget that almost all innovations can be equally used for "bad" and "good". Much like there are bad bots in Steemit there are also good bots that counter them. Automation will function much the same.

Even if studies say that most jobs will be replaced and that people will have to find new industries there is no need to panic. Want more reassurance? Talk with your grandparents. If someone told them back in 1940 that they would be doing business with a piece of plastic covered in glass - with various eletrical operations taking place inside that device that enable communication across the entire planet in real time - they would think you were on the wrong meds.