Our ancestors in the 18th century didn't have a time machine, but neither were they stupid. Our view of economics is going to look similarly primitive in 300-400 years. The notion that jobs, and thus work, was going to disappear has been a theme since the Industrial Revolution began, in the late 18th century. A treatise from that time period on how to avoid a depression is certainly suspect, but the crash in 2008 wasn't so long ago, so it's not our understanding of market forces is 100% either. (To be fair, our understanding did allow us to recover from it, in an imperfect way.)
We still don't have a better answer as to what the displaced will do for work than we did in the 18th century, other than "oh, we'll create new jobs". Not comforting, especially to anyone that simply can't afford to go to a coding bootcamp, or those that have gone and dropped out. They, too, deserve not to starve or die in the gutter. Thus, there is wisdom from the 1800's that is relevant, even today.
We still don't have a better answer as to what the displaced will do for work than we did in the 18th century, other than "oh, we'll create new jobs". Not comforting, especially to anyone that simply can't afford to go to a coding bootcamp, or those that have gone and dropped out. They, too, deserve not to starve or die in the gutter. Thus, there is wisdom from the 1800's that is relevant, even today.