My initial (learned?) reaction about automation is also that it's a good thing. But when analyzing it, automation only provides very temporary gains. Even if those gains were distributed evenly, people in the end would not necessarily be better off.

Pretty much almost all (time) gains from automation get immediately filled with non-automated tasks instead of giving you endless free time.

Otherwise at this point in time in history no one would need to work. But we keep coming up with more stuff to do and fill up our time.