It's kind of like using an Ox in modern farming because you want more farmers to have work. You wouldn't do that because your farming business (barring some great marketing that lets you recoup the costs) would just go bankrupt quickly.

I see where you're coming from but that's quite an oversimplification, don't you think? Software that drives a computer's graphic card, for example, which in turn gets used to run software that enables a physician to explore a 3D MRI, are just two examples of tasks that do not consist of automating manual labour.

(You could probably pay a lot of painters to paint a lot of pictures but hooking them up to the MRI might be a little difficult).

There's a lot of software that achieves new things, rather than old and well-known things really fast and without involving hands or a human brain.

I prefer to avoid discussing ethics on forums like HN, so I won't comment on whether or not working on software that puts people out of work is "the right thing to do" -- suffice to say that, if you wish to avoid doing that, there's plenty of room to do it while still doing your job as a software engineer.

Precisely. And the only way those new things are thought up is if someone has the time to dedicate to the task. If that person instead has to spend 12 hours a day foraging for berries just to stay alive, then they won't have time to build 3D MRI code.

The gains to productivity brought about by mechanical -- and now digital -- automation have lifted billions out of poverty and extended their lifespans by decades. I agree with GP that the only purpose for software is to automate a human task. Lucky for us, software is doing things that humans can't do at all (or would take years of effort, in the case of your MRI picture).

By the way, you can always find a "cost reduction" in anything you do, it's a matter of point of view and horizon.

Now, one farmer can work a hundred acres before breakfast with crop yields higher than ever due to technology. Would you have us go back to an ox and a plow so as not to kill agricultural jobs? Same story for textiles. Should we reopen the vast mills that employed thousands? We don't have elevator operator jobs. The printing press put all the scribes out of business.

Contrary to your viewpoint, the economic thing to do would be to automate as much work as possible. When labor is more productive, you can earn the same money in less time. This is how we can afford to not work weekends, not because of labor laws. When part (or all) of a person's job is automated, it frees them up to do something else. More importantly, they can take some workload from someone else's plate, freeing the other to do higher-order work.

How many brilliant minds throughout history never made a significant contribution because they spent their lives toiling in some field or hunting/foraging for their own food? It is only when material needs are easily obtained that the time is freed for the intellectual to think. Historically, this was only the aristocracy, privileged from birth, that had free time because of their serfs and vassals doing the labor. Compare to today, where anyone with enough intelligence can make such contributions, precisely because they're not trapped in a brutal subsistence lifestyle. (Yes, there are tons of issues about education and opportunity here. But we don't have to gather our food to survive anymore.)

However, while automation helps in the aggregate, the world isn't lived or experienced in the aggregate but on the individual level. Put Jeff Bezos and 9 people living without shelter or money in a room, and in aggregate their average wealth is $15 billion per person; but that number tells you nothing about the individuals. When the factory closes due to technological advancement, sometimes those individuals can't get another job or one that pays nearly as much.

So we need to both encourage technological advances that increase productivity, but make sure it benefits individuals. I think the basic principle is that capital can move much more quickly than people - e.g., you can pull the money out of a factory in Kokkata or Indianapolis and invest bit in one in Hanoi much more quickly than the workers can move to Hanoi (probably impossible) or find another job anywhere. The answer may be much better unemployment insurance, retraining, and laws slowing economic changes enough that individuals can keep up, to a degree based on the economic impact: e.g., closing a big factory in a small town is higher impact than closing a startup in London.

Of course, society has to be able to sustain and re-educate these people for new productive jobs. That's the part where most societies have failed, leading to civil unrest.