Is it really?

There is nothing wrong with fighting for workers rights while automation is not here yet.

The problem is that automation has to be taxed accordingly to allow us to live with dignity when there is no job to occupy (i.e UBI), and guess who's against taxation? "The left" would be the wrong answer.

I don't see any paradox. 1.Tax the rich now. 2. Improve worker rights which will push us faster towards automation. 3. Prepare legislation to tax automation and implement UBI.

What happens if we don't do that?

1. The rich will continue to take advantage of people's labor while paying them peanuts. 2. The middle class disappears, we end up with a system of two classes, the slaves and the lords. 3. Automation will come regardless and we won't be ready for it regulation wise, and people will die from hunger.

Pick

I've never heard of this before. Are there other political paradoxes you're aware of, say for example, a paradox of the right?

The promise of automation has always been that you'll get a better job with less menial labour if your job is automated. But I don't believe that's been the case, overall. It seems to me that automation causes people to be displaced from jobs where their skills are valued, to jobs where their skills are seen as replaceable. In a capitalist system, without something like UBI, that's a huge problem because once you're at the bottom it's easy to fall out of the system entirely. So, you frame it as a choice between hard work and easy work - but I think ultimately it's closer to a choice between hard work and poverty or death.

There is no mechanism in our capitalist system for allowing people to be automated out of a job while still living a good life.