The trick, of course, is to come up with a government that can be trusted to put down Luddite uprisings and the like without going full Soviet with progressive-sounding concepts like central planning, gulags, and collective farms.
It all comes down to the problem of defining just what "progress" means. But in general, when a society can feed, clothe, and shelter more people with fewer resources, that's a good indication that things are moving in the right direction. And that's where technology comes in. Maybe there's a better way forward, but the Luddites were sure as fuck not going to find it.
What does it mean when the a society CAN feed clothe and shelter everyone with ease, but chooses not to in favour of enriching a handful of people? Because that’s the world we live in, and it’s the one the luddites tried to prevent.
And as others have noted, it's well understood that the Luddites initiated the violence. That makes them the bad guys.
> Despite their modern reputation, the original Luddites were neither opposed to technology nor inept at using it. Many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile industry. Nor was the technology they attacked particularly new. Moreover, the idea of smashing machines as a form of industrial protest did not begin or end with them.
[edit] > One technology the Luddites commonly attacked was the stocking frame, a knitting machine first developed more than 200 years earlier by an Englishman named William Lee.
I'm surprised this article continues to play into these misconceptions. [1]
The government violently quashed a labor movement that chose to protest by breaking machines, not an anti-technology movement. Wasn't the first time, and certainly wasn't the last.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
From your post: The Luddites were not anti-technology
Both of these statements can't be true. Which one (if either) is correct?
The primary beneficiary of machine looms is the people who can now afford to own 20 shirts instead of just one.
The primary beneficiary is the guy that can sell 2000 shirts instead of just 100. Anything that makes it easier for you to buy shit is not for your benefit. They are hoping you buy it because they've made it so easy for you to buy it, so just buy it! And I promise you they are not forwarding any of the profits from the additional output to their remaining laborers.
One thing that people who log onto HN and advocate a class war never seem to understand is that they have far more to lose in such a "struggle" than they could ever gain. Our chains rest pretty lightly on our shoulders, all things considered.
If you disagree, well, other sites beckon.
"Vox populi, vox Dei" works great, right up until it doesn't.
National socialism is the result of the rest of europe impoverishing germany post ww1 - not the desires of a people left to flourish
As for communism, that’s far to big a topic to crack open this deep in the comments.
These people are wrong. History and sociology have a lot of irreducible complexity and analogies and systematization are usually misleading. There is a lot of literature linking Luddite movements with organized and progressive labor movement. As is " What's actually best for society?"
> Luddites to hold the industrial revolution at bay
They never tried to do such a thing. Rather, they made an effort to steer it in a way that would be more socially equitable, such as advocating for better coordination and communication between management and laborers, not unlike the system Germany - a very successful and technically advanced industrial power - has in place currently. Machine destruction was a last resort sort of action with a high correlation with suppression of other outlets for industrial action, such as strict enforcement of the legislation outright banning of any workers associations.
> If you disagree, well, other sites beckon.
This is plain false dichotomy. Equating disagreeing with you with being wrong is not very conducive of an open discussion and I think this kind of posturing has not place in a forum such as this one.
The sheer privilege you're flaunting... the sheer gall. Just wow.
Do you put yourself more in the position of the machine-owner...? asks the person holding a teraflop-class computer in their hand, without a trace of irony.
Automation has made our lives so much easier and the common man so much wealthier. Imagine if we were still weaving our clothes by hand because master weavers in the 1800s were scared of losing their jobs.
> Imagine if we were still weaving our clothes by hand because master weavers in the 1800s were scared of losing their jobs.
Seems like that might have been a win-win-win. We would have high quality clothing. Weavers would have a high quality of life. Fast fashion, and it's unquantifiably massive environmental impact, wouldn't exist. Where's the downside?