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Comment by pixelready | Hacker News Reader

Here’s everyone’s daily reminder that the Luddites were an anti-exploitation movement that were retconned into knuckle dragging technophobes by Capitalist propaganda. It is, was, and always will be, about the fair distribution of returns from productivity gains.

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>It is, was, and always will be, about the fair distribution of returns from productivity gains.

I think we can agree with this. The system that determines the fair distribution of productivity gains today will have to change entirely.

And there should be a daily reminder that as long as we live in a Capitalist society, what befell the Luddites will also befall those that try to resist an economic force of this magnitude.

Would you rather feel justified in the knowledge that the Luddites were principally right and resist, or would you rather learn the lesson of their fate and adapt?

How would you even resist? Say the entire US population pushes back and gets protectionist regulations passed; there will always be hungry people just a few 100ms ping away willing to outcompete you using AI.

Really, at this point there are only two choices: change society to move beyond Capitalism, or adapt to the new economic reality. Either choice is valid, and I suspect eventually one will lead to the other, but there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.

> Would you rather feel justified in the knowledge that the Luddites were principally right and resist, or would you rather learn the lesson of their fate and adapt?

Keep your poison. If everyone adapted this way, we would not have worker rights, and our children would still work in mines and factories for pennies.

Where the commenter is right is that luddites didn't have (or had they?) a global competitor more than happy to push their entire system aside. Not that they personally thought about this argument, just that the context and possible consequences were different.

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