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Historically, guilds were first and foremost a tool to enforce monopoly power on the part of masters against anyone else trying to enter the market (and against eachother to maintain monopoly pricing and supply). Luddites were actually just doing what guilds normally did.

Agreed, but parent article makes the good point that the Hansa League and guilds also pushed back very effectively on the nobility in Germany snd Northern Europe (Bergen Norway was in the Hansa League).

And if you are willing to be more generous (as the author and I are) these protective societies of workers and merchants were an early step toward free market economies unencumbered by lazy landed gentry. Compare the history of Spain and France during this era to that of Germany and Holland.

> guilds also pushed back very effectively on the nobility in Germany snd Northern Europe

If your argument is that exclusive initiatory societies were an improvement on hereditary nobility rule then you won't get much of a push back from me. However, are they better than constitutional democratic republics?

I don't actually have a clear answer to that question. I mean, I have a feeling that I have more chance of being initiated into a guild than I do being promoted to nobility. That potential for inclusion goes a long way, much like the oft-cited American dream where even the poor think they have a chance at being a millionaire. And our current democratic system doesn't seem to be adequately controlling the quality of our society.

As I mentioned, it is actually a very complex question. I just recommend people to be skeptical. Societies that form around keeping some thing secret except for initiated members for the purposes of exclusivity should be treated with a large dose of skepticism.

According to people who complained about guilds, sure.

But let's not forget that fraud and incompetence are extremely common across history. And also that the very concept of universities derived from guilds.

So in a sense we do still have, and rely on, a guild system today.

In a way it's also simply a network of trust. Sure, you didn't have many masters but journeymen carried the reputation of their master and that transferred when seeking employment elsewhere as well as when eventually becoming masters themselves.

The concept of having the number of businesses artificially limited also isn't gone in modern Germany: notaries and medical practices are allocated licenses based on regional population densities. As I understand it, taxi medallions are another example in the US (not sure how this works in Germany). Of course the idea in this case is to encourage specialists to spread out throughout the country rather than bunch up in the most lucrative population centers.

I'm not sure why you're bring Luddites into this. Ludd and his followers were opposing the industrialization of their professions because it meant they were losing their jobs to machines while the factory owners were continuing to build on the wealth they helped create. Technological progress is still usually spoken about in abstract and misleading terms of "increasing productivity" as if it were about reducing the workload of the worker when instead the worker's hours remain the same and a reduced workload just translates into "redundancies", i.e. the workers don't gain anything from being "more productive", they actually stand to lose their jobs entirely because fewer workers are necessary for the same output.

The behavior of smashing their competitor's means of production was typical of guilds, and iirc it was one of the last instances of guilds acting to defend their interest in England. I'm more sympathetic to the Luddites than most guilds since it's around the time the labor/capital split in the productive class actually happened.

My mom started a "guild" in 1970 with a linguist. This was the counter culture optimistic term for a collective of like minded people bonded by craftsmanship and commerce.

The guild outlived her.

https://www.artisansguildgallery.com/history.html#/

The linguist was out of his mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan

Late Carlin got far too misanthropic for my taste.

Like all things, we need balance. This is a good argument against guilds, but there are positive aspects of the system too. Imagine a world that was truly a free for all -- one in which there were no trusted authorities in any field. I believe such a society would quickly devolve into a dystopia and collapse.

From my perspective, the big problem is when there is no competition among guilds and the guild leaders wield disproportionate societal power. That is how you end up with oppressive oligarchy, which honestly is a reasonable description of the global order right now. My hope though is that we are better able to organize and compete against the current oligarchic order.

> I believe such a society would quickly devolve into a dystopia and collapse.

The main argument in favor of totalitarianism/authoritarianism is pretty much always law & order. And the main argument against the prevailing power structure is pretty much always freedom (e.g. from oppression and/or protection of fairness in competition). So the question is often, what is more important to you, order or freedom? How much freedom would you give up for order, and how much order would you give up for freedom?

However, guilds aren't the only way to promote structure/order. As I said, the system in Canada is regionalized through state run organizations which are answerable to a democratic process. It is not through some secret cabal of "Masters" who make arbitrary decisions. We can achieve order without requiring esoteric fraternal societies. For all of their flaws, constitutional democratic republics offer a much better system of accountability.

> My own feeling is that guilds of all sorts prioritize exclusivity for the purposes of bestowing power on some select few. As the article states "Master’s were few and far between".

One possible reason could simply be there's a lot more future impact to granting someone the final title. If you proclaim someone a "Maestro of C++," then suddenly all the other C++ laborers will get a clear signal that whatever that person is doing is implicitly also what they should do, if they want to move up the ladder.

Beyond that, the top jobs usually comes with required work to train the next generation. So this person would heavily contribute, both implicitly and explicitly, to the future of the C++ guild.

Considering that impact in combination with how hard it would be to undo the decision, it's not surprising that many organizations might be cautious about deciding to hand someone that title.

> clear guidelines, training, testing and certification.

This makes sense, too. For any organization that wants to stay in the business of handing out these titles for the long-term, meaningful transparency is a good way to go about it.

> the top jobs usually comes with required work to train the next generation

Not for free. The reason the system worked back then is that apprentices were basically just a source of extremely labour if not indentured servants outright. They were entirely dependent on their master if they wanted to advance their career.

I believe that the main function of guilds was as proto trade unions: to protect those with a craft.

The differentiation of craft and art originated in Italy. It was they who developed the academies as a panic response to a perceived lack of Italian geniuses (this was following the death of Michelangelo). Following that France developed their own academies as a means to develop a national style separate to Italy.

> George Carlin has a famous comedy bit where he states "It's a big club and you ain't in it"

Just for the record, the club that Carlin is referring to, is not some professional guild. Those were difficult, but not impossible to join.

He's referring to a very tiny minority of ultra-rich people. That's the club that usually doesn't take new members.

not sure what the issue is unless someone had fallen down the rabbit hole of anti-masonry. FOSS projects could learn a great deal about how to run sustainable organizations from fraternities, and their hierarchies and lodge structure is likely a more stable and sustainable form than 501c non-profits.

if you want to know about freemasonry, consider the quality of their enemies.

I think there is "anti-masonry" and what I suggested as skepticism. For example, nepotism and cronyism aren't de-facto bad (e.g. a father handing the family business to his son or a person hiring a trusted and loyal friend). But if someone is a member of the "cronyism promotion society" and they write an article extolling the benefits of cronyism then that opinion ought to be digested with a large grain of salt. It is worth pointing out that there are some negative aspects to cronyism, just as there are negative aspects to secretive initiative societies.

At it's core, this article is a stealth motte and bailey argument. It points out the benefits of guilds (where there is a legitimate argument to be made about skill transfer and quality of work) to support a deeper ideology about hierarchical structures of society. If one wants to make the argument that the ritualization present in free masonry is a net benefit to X, then present that argument directly.