[nathanb]

Yeah, that paragraph was where she completely lost me. The desire to ensure the poor are taken care of and given opportunities for advancement is not mutually incompatible with the automation of rote tasks. It is not incumbent on society to stop technological advancement in certain areas to ensure that no additional humans lose their jobs to automated processes.

Getting upset at the loss of jobs is the luddite position. The more socially liberal position is getting upset that the savings from the loss of said jobs are rolled up into the pockets of corporate executives and working to ensure that wealth is equitably distributed. The socially conservative position is that the additional wealth freed up by the automation will create new job opportunities elsewhere that the recently unemployed individual can seek out and pursue. I lean more to the socially liberal side (and hopefully this bias did not creep out in my description of the conservative point of view), but either one is preferable to putting the kibosh on progress because it might step on someone's toes.