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Comment by jboynyc | Hacker News Reader

There's a recent book about this, subtitled "The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job": https://www.versobooks.com/books/3184-breaking-things-at-wor...

> In the nineteenth century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English countryside, practicing drills and manoeuvres that they would later deploy on unsuspecting machines. The movement has been derided by scholars as a backwards-looking and ultimately ineffectual effort to stem the march of history; for Gavin Mueller, the movement gets at the heart of the antagonistic relationship between all workers, including us today, and the so-called progressive gains secured by new technologies. The luddites weren’t primitive and they are still a force, however unconsciously, in the workplaces of the twenty-first century world.

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I frankly expect "smashing them to bits" (or setting them on fire) to be the response in France when self-driving cargo trucks are introduced.

In America and a lot of other rich countries I can imagine a large workforce just sort of slowly dissipating as they are made redundant by the unstoppable force of technology, but at least a few places may strongly disagree about the unstoppability, and put it to the test.

Do you personally feel like smashing such a truck? Or would only ex truck drivers feel that way? Because if they are simply being faded out of existence (replacing retiring drivers with AI), there won't be any ex truckers to smash the trucks.

I don't personally, no; in fact I'm more likely to end up (accidentally?) contributing to the autonomous trucking revolution.

The faded-out version is what I think will happen in the USA. My point was that there are countries with much more confrontational labor movements (France in particular) and I think there will be truck smashers (burners, blockers, etc) there long before a majority of truckers become ex-truckers.

> Because if they are simply being faded out of existence (replacing retiring drivers with AI), there won't be any ex truckers to smash the trucks.

counterpoint:

> Well paid drivers no longer exist. The last time he has seen a local work as truck driver was in mid-2000 and meanwhile salaries have dropped to ~€700 and less therefore only some Eastern Europeans can justify that working as a driver still makes sense for them. -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25891779

You mean Brexit was kind of UK truck drivers smashing the trucks (because of cheap competition, and AI would be even cheaper, so more truck smashing)?

Indeed, that is why I figured (on a trip to the country a few years ago) why self-service supermarkets checkouts haven't been rolled out in South Africa. That is a country of very high unemployment, so perhaps one could expect violence if overt technology to save labour costs were introduced.

self-service checkouts also work well in high trust societies. By themselves, they aren't good enough to prevent shrinkage enough that it is cheaper to use them.

> I can imagine a large workforce just sort of slowly dissipating

Why imagine? The US working class is "slowly dissipating" in many ways:

* Homelessness

* Substance abuse, especially legal opiates

* Increase in mortality rates

etc.

I would have to say that 'derided by scholars' is a bit much. Most historians who are aware of the luddites in any detail would agree with this take. While Luddites were derided in the past since around the 1930s and works like Herbert Butterfield's the Whig interpretation of History Historians have been very wary of ideas like 'the march of history' and luddites are certainly presented within the scholarship as an example where views have changed away from that kind of narrative.

I quit a job right after college because of the scene in Office Space where they smash the printer with a bat in the field. That movie was kind of a tip of the hat to the Luddites.

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