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The Luddites were a labor rights movement reacting to the new shifting power dynamic of centralized production owned by a few, in an era with virtually no safet
by MichaelCollins 4y ago
The Luddites were a labor rights movement reacting to the new shifting power dynamic of centralized production owned by a few, in an era with virtually no safety and worker rights regulations. How would you feel if your career evaporated and you were forced to choose between starvation and sending your children to work in a textile factory where they get maimed by the machines they're told to crawl into and repair? You probably wouldn't find much comfort in the popular retort of "but shirts are really cheap now!"
That Luddites have been successfully maligned as irrationally anti-technology crazy people is a propaganda victory by industrialist factory owners and their friends, the newspaper men.
- mitchdoogle 4y agoWhatever their motivation, their ire is misguided and selfish. Is the world supposed to just sit and around and never innovate or try to become more productive? So people can have a job doing work better done by machines? I don't think so. The Luddites and any such analogs today are focused on the wrong thing - they should not attack new technology or the companies and individuals using them, but rather campaign for better social safety net from the government.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoMaybe new technology should be restricted by default until regulation can catch up with it. I'm not sure, but the 'cheap shirts benefit everybody too much to pump the brakes' argument for unfettered innovation leaves me deeply unimpressed. IMHO the best argument for unfettered innovation is the impossibility of slowing innovation globally; it can be slowed in one country, but that country can't force all the rest to get with that program and will eventually be overtaken by technologically superior foes.
- anigbrowl 4y agoA valid point, but restrictions are often used to build or fortify fiefdoms.