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Comment by xref | Hacker News Reader

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady”

> The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. Their dispute is best understood not as being over “technology” but about who gets the benefit of new technologies and who decides what kinds of technologies will be implemented

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Recapped, towards the end of the article:

> The Luddites, again, were not anti-technology. They were anti getting trampled on and anti having no say in the way that this industrial development would take place. And when they lost that battle, this was the cost. It was decades and decades of mass immiseration.

It's a bullshit argument either way. Say it's 1800 and you need 100 workers to make a new suit, which costs as much as one's annual rent (yes, really). Suddenly machines show up and can make the same suit with 10 workers and at 1/10 the cost. The other 90 workers are outraged, break machines and cry about "enriching capitalists at the expense of laborers". What is the solution exactly? Should the average household continue to spend 20% of their income on clothing just because a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely.

> a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely.

In the context of 1800s industrial revolution, this means employing child labour, hugely unsafe machines that cause amputations and death, draconian death penalties against the Luddites, long working hours, and things like that. All for a small pitiful wage.

THAT is what this is about: outright exploitation that would be spectacularly illegal in well-organized countries today, and is called things like "de-facto slavery" in places where it still happens. If not having these things is "subsidizing" people then one of us doesn't know what that word means.

That is a misrepresentation of the argument. The point is not that 90 workers are outraged, the point is that the business owner will spend 90% less and keep the difference for him, accumlating wealth. The "wealth pie" is now more concentrated in only a few hands, and in the next technological evolution, the same process occurs, which leads to an always increasing concentration of the wealth available with less and less people. The Luddites did not say to keep the 90 people subsidized (that again is a rhetorical misrepresentation and very dismissive of the work force). They said that the wealth available had to be distributed more evenly between the people who created this wealth and who are impacted by the change. As the capitalists of the time refused, they smashed the machines and the other side said they were against progress. The fact is that we do not put the same meaning in the word progress: if a society becomes more and more a society of masters and servants with less and less possibilities for the lower class to better their condition, is that progress? There is a convergence at play here : real life communism and extreme capitalism are the same thing, the monopolization of wealth by a small class of people by every mean possible and then, making this admissible through communication to the masses.

I think a portion of people would say yes, it's better to keep the status quo. Imo progress always wins because eventually someone somewhere will break the taboo. Technology even gets lost and rediscovered, which means even if you supress the knowledge someone will still eventually do it. So it's pretty pointless to fight, I'd rather try to benefit from it.

Concise yet complete. Well done.

I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor. If you're pro technology only until it makes you, the human, redundant, you're anti-technology.

It's a weak attempt to reframe people upset about losing job market relevancy as some noble human rights advocates.

>I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor. If you're pro technology only until it makes you, the human, redundant, you're anti-technology.

This smells like the "Yet you participate in society, curious!" comic. Is this just for upvotes' sake? "Job market relevancy" during George IV meant returning to the coal mines at best.

Trying to make a point about a supposed Historical fact (Luddites were anti technology?) without any historical context is disingenuous.

Do you know about actual Luddite activity and what sources do you have and how do you interpret them? Or are you just making a point in a vacuum about your opinion on semantics?

> Do you know about actual Luddite activity and what sources do you have and how do you interpret them? Or are you just making a point in a vacuum about your opinion on semantics?

The latter obviously. I'm not arguing with Luddite philosophy, but more with the author of the article making a claim that they were not anti-technology and then proceeding to explain how they absolutely were.

I'd be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't anti-technology per your definition.

Are you sure you're not an AI advocating for a world ruled by AI capitalists where us primitive humans have no role whatsoever? :P

The moment technology can do my job better/cheaper than I do, I don't see a moral argument to continue being employed and costing my employer more money for less productivity. Obviously, it'd be non-ideal for me to lose income, but I'm not conceited enough to insist to continue being paid by providing sub-par performance.

My job market relevance plummeting would be my personal problem and I don't see a reason why my employer would be responsible for solving it for me.

Ok, but say 50% of jobs become replaced by AI, then what?Even 10% or 20% of jobs replaced would have huge implications for our current society. We don’t have any solutions in place for that inevitability, especially at the rate AI technology is increasing. And it will eventually become a problem for your employer as well when a large portion of the population can no longer afford your employer’s products or services.

Standard equilibrium analysis proves that the efficiency gain is supposed to cut the prices to material cost, including cutting the material cost.

Of course actual capital fights tooth and nail to prevent this, even if this means literally getting people to starve and unable to earn with a job, even agricultural.

There are known fixes, starting from making basic services and items free (eating the material cost which is pennies actually), employing more people running these as they're currently all understaffed.

Abundance is the expected outcome of the technology. Including abundance of leisure time. Capitalism however requires scarcity for profit and oppression to keep the rich special.

We have an abundance of housing, so why are some unhoused? We have an overabundance of food but some people are hungry and malnourished. Things might get more dicey with water soon.

Right, but I don't feel like it's the employers responsibility to be my economic safety net. There's a million ways to approach this problem without having workers keep pretending they're still relevant and collecting a paycheck for something technology can do better.

At some 90% of human labor would become obsolete and we as a society should spend some time planning how to handle this situation. UBI is one such solution.

I think that continue paying people doing meaningless work just to preserve their dignity is stupid and counterproductive.

I don't think the Luddite position is that the employer has a moral responsibility to keep their employees employed.

As you said, it's "we as a society" needs to figure out a solution. If society ignores this problem, then I think the anti-technology aspect of Luddism is at least understandable IMHO.

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