Indeed. It should be the goal of society to automate away as much work as possible. If there are perverse incentives working against this then we should correct them.
2. While I agree with your stance, it is not by itself sufficient. If you provide the automation but you do not correct the perverse incentives (or you worry about correcting them only later) that you mention, then you are contributing to widening the disparity between a category of workers (who have now lost their leverage) and those with assets and capital (who have a reduced need for workers).
Regardless, programmers would be hypocritical to decry having their jobs automated away.
If you're asking why do people respond the way they do to disparity, then I can only speculate that it has something to do with the meaning of life.
By your reasoning, maybe we don't need backhoes and should just hire a bunch of guys with spoons instead?