I admit he's not a poster boy for clear thinking, but I think you're uncharitably interpreting some of what he says.

"Instead, it was the middle-class people who were consigned to the bread lines."
But what Lanier takes away from this is apparently that automation is bad.

What I take away is not that he's complaining about automation, but rather about filesharing of music: "I’d been an early advocate of making information free ... what I started to see is that once we made information free, it wasn’t that we consigned all the big stars to the bread lines. Instead, it was the middle-class people [in the music industry] who were consigned to the bread lines."