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Comment by tdb7893 | Hacker News Reader

It's all just this century's Luddites

Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?

> Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?

Space colonies? That or war.

That's exactly the point. People fail when they look at what exists today. Technology opens opportunities people did not imagine before.

Demonstrably incorrect. Technology reduces labor force participation. Some portion of that void has been filled with McJobs in the last 15 years but that isn't sustainable.

plus millions who who support truckers, truckstop workers etc

I don't know. So far unemployment due to more efficient technical advances hasn't lead to overall structural unemployment so I'm not too worried in the long term. For example if we can ship goods much more efficiently it could lead to increase in production of goods, mining of raw materials, even the service industry as people have more disposable income and that's not even counting the jobs running and maintaining the autonomous fleet. I'm not saying the short term might be kinda hard but long term the economy will adjust.

Like it's been adjusting for the last 40 years? Do we need to review graphed data for labor force participation, real wages, and income inequality?

You should actually read up on the Luddites. Their main goal was better treatment of workers; smashing machines was just their preferred means of protest. The image of the backwards anti-tech fetishist was a propaganda smear by the industrialists at the time, which was so successful that people are still buying it now.

I have already been told this many times in the past (firstly when I learned about them originally from my history teacher). I need a new word for people that irrationally fear technology but technophobe just looks weird to me.

So you know it's wrong, but you keep doing it?

Aren't you doing exactly the same thing as the industrialists who slandered the Luddites? You're reducing the real welfare of thousands of workers and their families to "oh, they're scared of technology, just ignore the silly primitives."

The ludites were of a generation that got screwed by progress. Their kids were better off though.

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