I think everyone is overlooking a very crucial factor. Just because automation takes your job, doesn't mean you're done and you are doomed to live forever without an income. It means you have to adapt. Myself, I plan on buying a robot and putting it in my basement and set it off on making things. As automation gets better it gets cheaper. When it gets cheap enough, everyone can afford it.

This dystopian view of the future with automation is like 1984 with surveillance. Now that cameras are cheap enough that the government can put them everywhere, people can also put them everywhere. The result is so far a wash. There is government surveillance that goes over the line but there is also people fighting back against other government over reach such as police brutality with cell phone cameras. The surveillance fight has just begun and who knows where it will end up but we do have a fighting chance. If we exercise some prudence and good judgement, we will be OK.

As for the automation fight. It will be tricky. The rich can afford to dump whatever product you decide to make at a fraction of the cost that it takes for you to make it. In this way they can drive all the small people out of the market. Therefore, there will be a need for community trading blocks that guarantee markets for each other's goods until the wealth of the rich dissipates to the point where they cannot afford to economically attack others. This may take a few life times or it may be accomplished quickly in the old French style with a guillotine.

Regardless of what might happen, the masses do have an opportunity to make their life better. I hope we can stick together and take back our economy so it works for all of us.