That’s a very easy thing to say when you’re not the one on the receiving end of these “transient problems”, though.
Would you tell a homeless person to their face that their poverty is a shame but it’s the price we need to pay for progress? And that you don’t know with any certainty when positive change will happen?
I have another argument that might be more convincing for you: automation makes things cheaper, so by definition it creates wealth for society. Now, you can argue that said wealth is unfairly distributed - and indeed wealth distribution itself is a thorny subject. But it is also a completely orthogonal one! I don't think we should stop from creating wealth until we find a "satisfactory" way to distribute it.... That feels like it would be a very bad idea to me.
There's a difference between being needlessly cruel and believing something is necessary and good, despite it creating some problems for some people for a while.
- Work actually getting done (through automation) - i.e. the "supply side" needs to be there
- People that demand it/ see it as necessary solution to _some_ problems (it won't just appear if there's no problem to be solved)
For me, it's simple: does it move society in the right direction? Yes, it creates some transient problems - but progress always does.