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The problem I have with the Luddites was their assumption that they were entitled to their way of life. It’s a similar refrain heard today... coal miners want m

The problem I have with the Luddites was their assumption that they were entitled to their way of life. It’s a similar refrain heard today... coal miners want more protection so they can continue to live and work in cole mining towns. They just want to feed their children... something we can all related to. But if times change, then you have to change with then. You don’t get to hold the rest of society hostage... either thru slowing tech progress via violence.. or continuing to support an industry that is destroying the planet.

dbasedweeb 8y ago
Can the average coal miner realistically move on with the times, or are you just asking them to die in penury? Maybe when we phase out a whole way of life for the greater good, we need to take care of the people left behind. If not, then of course they’ll fight tooth and nail, and we deserve it for expecting them to just bed over and take it for everyone’s benefit, but their’s.
- crazydoggers 8y ago
  Yes... I’m sure they can. It’s primarily a choice. And let’s not pretend that we’re talking about the underprivileged. Coal miners often make more than college graduates. Often those fighting the hardest are doing so because they have a sweet deal. The people who are actually poor are more flexible... already working several jobs, or taking night classes to do better. In the end it’s entightlement plain and simple.
  - dbasedweeb 8y ago
    Yes... I’m sure they can. It’s primarily a choice. And let’s not pretend that we’re talking about the underprivileged. Coal miners often make more than college graduates. Working harder too, and in a single very specialized field. So you take that away, what skills do they have? What choices are they free to make? Often those fighting the hardest are doing so because they have a sweet deal. The sweet deal of working deep underground on a coal face, in dirty, dangerous conditions? Uh huh. Besides you’re proving their point, when people out there just shrug and say “fuck ‘em, not my problem,” who wouldn’t fight? They don’t owe you anything either. Not to mention that your “average salary” bit is deceptive. The average salary for a coal miner is around $65,000, while the average salary for a recent college grad with a bachelor’s is $50,000. Obviously that includes everything from engineering to expressive dance, and there is no definite ceiling. A coal miner is stuck on the low end, period, and painting them as privelaged... on HN... is pathetic.
    - crazydoggers 8y ago
      Here’s a coal miner... "It's not an easy life here," he says. "But I think it's about the best life you can have." Imagine instead of a blue collar worker which is easy to empathize with or glorify... a banker or lawyer or some other less well liked worker. Imagine those people making good money... saying their industry needs to be protected just so they can keep their jobs. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/09/607273500/in-the-coal-counties-of-central-appalachia-will-trump-s-promises-come-true https://www.npr.org/2018/05/09/607273500/in-the-coal-countie...
    - crazydoggers 8y ago
      $65k is not low paying. Haha. And they’ve made life choices to be there and do that, rather than prioritize other things. My grandfather came to this country with nothing and put both his sons thru college, working multiple jobs, learning English.. with no skills! Never would he have complained if the company he worked at over 8 hours a day putting stuff in boxes closed because they were killing people. Coal is destroying the world plain and simple. It’s not much to ask to move on. It’s an industry that needs to end.
oliv__ 8y ago
I feel like you are unintentionally making the very point of this article: the Luddites weren't simply "entitled" to their craft, they were entitled to their ability to feed their children and exist in their society. Which I think every human being is very much entitled to. Furthermore, the article specifically insists that they weren't against all technology but instead this particular technology and its use and impact on their society (lower wages etc...). When you say "You don’t get to hold the rest of society hostage...", this just sounds like another way of calling anyone who disagrees with your thesis a Luddite, and to end the conversation. Who said the "rest of society" agrees with you in the first place?
- crazydoggers 8y ago
  Your entitled to feed your children... but your not entitled to force the rest of us to support your way of life to do so. The rest of us need to respond to the times and adapt. No one gets to say my job should always exist. Unless ever person can have the same guarantee, then crafts people and coal miners need to adapt like the rest of us.
  - mistermann 8y ago
    I'm forced to pay taxes to support things I don't necessarily like, which I'm ok with provided there is some compromise and discussion, and it serves the greater good. But I'm really starting to notice a lot of things happening that maybe aren't serving the greater good, and I particularly don't care for this authoritative culture developing, mainly among young progressives, that seems to not welcome dissenting opinions.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    What about your responsibility to care for me and my children after, through no fault of my own, you completely destroyed my sources of income? Did all my work, now obsoleted, not contribute to society's wealth and progress? I have a similar view here to what Scott Alexander explained in[0]. Humans were here first, society came later. To quote, "Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have. Of course it owes him when he suddenly can’t support himself. Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" I'm very much a fan of progress of technology. But I want this progress to be for the good of all of us. Part of that is considering how that progress is affecting people and mitigating the negatives. Anything less is IMO complete lack of empathy. -- [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ - trigger warning: mentions of mental health and suicide. But the conclusion is 100% transplantable to this topic, and the author acknowledged that in the text too.
5DFractalTetris 8y ago
To some extent the miner is the vanguard of your ability to discuss this on the internet. We can't run the grid on lumber or "energy crops," and all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. There's an advanced energy ecosystem that keeps a lot of really subtle and important things running as the human ecosystem evolves. Maybe at some point coal mining does get phased out in favor of less energy and cleaner energy, but you're gambling on that miner's tonnage not being necessary to clear that gap. A society could also say, "No, coal stops tomorrow," but a lot of places tried "Everyone's a farmer tomorrow" in the 20th century for very similar reasons and hundreds of millions of people starved to death. That coal miner isn't only feeding his family, that miner feeds and warms probably thousands of people. To phase out his job, you need a willful change in the infrastructure of the places he serves: you would need everyone to live somewhere without heating, to give up some amount of electricity use, and to begin food production independent of energy (which is a lark, if you've ever tried to grow a crop it is not easy, especially without Haber process or crop defense agents).
- 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
  To elaborate a bit: before the Haber process there were 1 billion people, and they were shipping bat guano from Chile to Europe to prevent hunger. After the Haber process, the population went from 1 billion to 7 billion in less than 100 years, but everyone was in preexisting cities which required heating and stuff. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are unsavory but they can't be halted without catastrophic repercussions, people freezing and going hungry and unemployed. A world which works without those technologies is not a feasible option for most people, in much the same way as the population explosion almost eradicated subsistence living. I think the most important thing about the Luddites is they're a reminder that a certain portion of the population in an industrial revolution sees the fruits of the new technologies, but is also experiencing a literally-unbearable negative impact from those same technologies. Which society holds the other hostage is a matter of perspective entirely.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  ...all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. You're going to have to back up that claim with some very strong evidence.

dbasedweeb 8y ago

Can the average coal miner realistically move on with the times, or are you just asking them to die in penury? Maybe when we phase out a whole way of life for the greater good, we need to take care of the people left behind. If not, then of course they’ll fight tooth and nail, and we deserve it for expecting them to just bed over and take it for everyone’s benefit, but their’s.

crazydoggers 8y ago
Yes... I’m sure they can. It’s primarily a choice. And let’s not pretend that we’re talking about the underprivileged. Coal miners often make more than college graduates. Often those fighting the hardest are doing so because they have a sweet deal. The people who are actually poor are more flexible... already working several jobs, or taking night classes to do better. In the end it’s entightlement plain and simple.
- dbasedweeb 8y ago
  Yes... I’m sure they can. It’s primarily a choice. And let’s not pretend that we’re talking about the underprivileged. Coal miners often make more than college graduates. Working harder too, and in a single very specialized field. So you take that away, what skills do they have? What choices are they free to make? Often those fighting the hardest are doing so because they have a sweet deal. The sweet deal of working deep underground on a coal face, in dirty, dangerous conditions? Uh huh. Besides you’re proving their point, when people out there just shrug and say “fuck ‘em, not my problem,” who wouldn’t fight? They don’t owe you anything either. Not to mention that your “average salary” bit is deceptive. The average salary for a coal miner is around $65,000, while the average salary for a recent college grad with a bachelor’s is $50,000. Obviously that includes everything from engineering to expressive dance, and there is no definite ceiling. A coal miner is stuck on the low end, period, and painting them as privelaged... on HN... is pathetic.
  - crazydoggers 8y ago
    Here’s a coal miner... "It's not an easy life here," he says. "But I think it's about the best life you can have." Imagine instead of a blue collar worker which is easy to empathize with or glorify... a banker or lawyer or some other less well liked worker. Imagine those people making good money... saying their industry needs to be protected just so they can keep their jobs. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/09/607273500/in-the-coal-counties-of-central-appalachia-will-trump-s-promises-come-true https://www.npr.org/2018/05/09/607273500/in-the-coal-countie...
  - crazydoggers 8y ago
    $65k is not low paying. Haha. And they’ve made life choices to be there and do that, rather than prioritize other things. My grandfather came to this country with nothing and put both his sons thru college, working multiple jobs, learning English.. with no skills! Never would he have complained if the company he worked at over 8 hours a day putting stuff in boxes closed because they were killing people. Coal is destroying the world plain and simple. It’s not much to ask to move on. It’s an industry that needs to end.

oliv__ 8y ago

I feel like you are unintentionally making the very point of this article: the Luddites weren't simply "entitled" to their craft, they were entitled to their ability to feed their children and exist in their society. Which I think every human being is very much entitled to. Furthermore, the article specifically insists that they weren't against all technology but instead this particular technology and its use and impact on their society (lower wages etc...). When you say "You don’t get to hold the rest of society hostage...", this just sounds like another way of calling anyone who disagrees with your thesis a Luddite, and to end the conversation. Who said the "rest of society" agrees with you in the first place?

crazydoggers 8y ago
Your entitled to feed your children... but your not entitled to force the rest of us to support your way of life to do so. The rest of us need to respond to the times and adapt. No one gets to say my job should always exist. Unless ever person can have the same guarantee, then crafts people and coal miners need to adapt like the rest of us.
- mistermann 8y ago
  I'm forced to pay taxes to support things I don't necessarily like, which I'm ok with provided there is some compromise and discussion, and it serves the greater good. But I'm really starting to notice a lot of things happening that maybe aren't serving the greater good, and I particularly don't care for this authoritative culture developing, mainly among young progressives, that seems to not welcome dissenting opinions.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  What about your responsibility to care for me and my children after, through no fault of my own, you completely destroyed my sources of income? Did all my work, now obsoleted, not contribute to society's wealth and progress? I have a similar view here to what Scott Alexander explained in[0]. Humans were here first, society came later. To quote, "Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have. Of course it owes him when he suddenly can’t support himself. Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" I'm very much a fan of progress of technology. But I want this progress to be for the good of all of us. Part of that is considering how that progress is affecting people and mitigating the negatives. Anything less is IMO complete lack of empathy. -- [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ - trigger warning: mentions of mental health and suicide. But the conclusion is 100% transplantable to this topic, and the author acknowledged that in the text too.

5DFractalTetris 8y ago

To some extent the miner is the vanguard of your ability to discuss this on the internet. We can't run the grid on lumber or "energy crops," and all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. There's an advanced energy ecosystem that keeps a lot of really subtle and important things running as the human ecosystem evolves. Maybe at some point coal mining does get phased out in favor of less energy and cleaner energy, but you're gambling on that miner's tonnage not being necessary to clear that gap. A society could also say, "No, coal stops tomorrow," but a lot of places tried "Everyone's a farmer tomorrow" in the 20th century for very similar reasons and hundreds of millions of people starved to death. That coal miner isn't only feeding his family, that miner feeds and warms probably thousands of people. To phase out his job, you need a willful change in the infrastructure of the places he serves: you would need everyone to live somewhere without heating, to give up some amount of electricity use, and to begin food production independent of energy (which is a lark, if you've ever tried to grow a crop it is not easy, especially without Haber process or crop defense agents).

5DFractalTetris 8y ago
To elaborate a bit: before the Haber process there were 1 billion people, and they were shipping bat guano from Chile to Europe to prevent hunger. After the Haber process, the population went from 1 billion to 7 billion in less than 100 years, but everyone was in preexisting cities which required heating and stuff. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are unsavory but they can't be halted without catastrophic repercussions, people freezing and going hungry and unemployed. A world which works without those technologies is not a feasible option for most people, in much the same way as the population explosion almost eradicated subsistence living. I think the most important thing about the Luddites is they're a reminder that a certain portion of the population in an industrial revolution sees the fruits of the new technologies, but is also experiencing a literally-unbearable negative impact from those same technologies. Which society holds the other hostage is a matter of perspective entirely.
nitrogen 8y ago
...all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. You're going to have to back up that claim with some very strong evidence.