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Actually a lot of them didn't, hence the protests. Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come.

• seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come. That case isn't true. The new generations had jobs well enough (increased productivity grew the economy much faster than before), they weren't committed to weaving clothes by hand. The Luddites themselves didn't fair as well in the short term, but many of them would have aged out of the work force in a few years anyways (manual weaving is pretty unforgiving on the body). Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal (we can rely even on America's social safety net), and their kids didn't want to be truck drivers anyways.
  • carlmr 5y ago
    >Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal That's quite optimistic. When did politicians ever talk about moving up the retirement age in the last decades. The internet brought insane growth through productivity gains in all industries. Even more than I'd expect from self-driving cars. And we haven't talked about moving up the retirement age. Also the question is what these people do now? In the next twenty years of unemployment until they reach the current retirement age?
• bduerst 5y ago
  Luddites to the weaving loom, Blacksmiths to the steel mill, farm hands to the combustion engine, secretaries to the email, travel agencies to the search engine, etc. Technology has a robust history of displacing jobs, and humans have a robust history of learning new skills. Change is never comfortable, but predictable.