5 ms·

People were definitely not fine with it but whenever they tried to do something about it the owner class sent the army and massacred them https://en.m.wikipedi

by staz 3y ago

People were definitely not fine with it but whenever they tried to do something about it the owner class sent the army and massacred them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

imtringued 3y ago
That is also what happened to the luddites. Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged. This part is left out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged That really not true. Nobody forced them to adopt anything (in a literal way). It’s just that automated factories could produce more faster while paying their workers much less since they didn’t require skilled craftsmen. Also artisans generally used a guild/cartel model which artificially constricted supply which inflated their incomes. > out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story. I thought it was pretty obvious to everyone that they were breaking machines because they eliminated demand for high skilled/high pay labour?
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
Yeah, the operators of company towns were violent pricks who didn't much like it that workers increasingly had better options than to die in a mine. That didn't change the economics though. Neither did committing violence against them, which was not only already illegal even then but also wildly unpopular. There's nothing better for workers than a competitive market. What's the boss going to do when the workers have the option to quit and get a better job somewhere else?
- conception 3y ago
  Get legislation passed like “right to work”, conspire with other business leaders to suppress worker wages/benefits, make striking illegal, etc etc etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    "Right to work" is not going to stop anyone from quitting if some other job provides better working conditions. The only reason you need to strike is if there isn't any other employer offering better terms that you can go work for instead. Otherwise you can just threaten to quit unless they meet your terms and actually do it if they don't. Conspiracies only work if the market is concentrated enough; if there are ten thousand employers and it's easy to start a new one then you're not going to be able to hold together a secret illegal cartel. None of those actually work in a competitive market.
    - syntheweave 3y ago
      The market can de-competitiveize itself through non-compete agreements, intellectual property laws, and other barriers to entry. The competitiveness occurs around the "ruleset", which shifts around according to the regulatory environment. The government tends to default to supporting strikebreaking(and still generally does in any era, including this one) because industrialists, financiers and politicians share lines of mutual support: legal ownership of intangibles like a corporation acts as an alternative to feudal fiefdoms and warlords, in that it's less destructive and lets complex processes evolve. Corporations are very effective at putting taxable assets on the books, which allows a more complex state bureaucracy, so politicians end up wanting the support of business for government power and expenditures. Financiers want their thumb on the scale, for the winners they picked to continue winning, rather than to run off and form a competitor. And the industrialists themselves, though they are often at the forefront of the most dramatic reorganizations, tend to get stuck in equilibriums where either they're the evil monopolist, or someone else is. Once you arrive at the equilibrium, the elite players lose their dynamism and are pressured to stay within the existing trends or lose their place. Thus when the Pinkertons or their modern counterparts come in, the officials shrug and say "business as usual, business as usual". The system convulses when it becomes a riot and property is destroyed because that weakens the whole premise: less capital to deploy, fewer assets to tax, failure to return on investment. And people out of a job, but if they were rioting it may have been a crummy job. It creates a shock that can break the equilibrium and enable a different deployment of labor and capital in a new technological environment. That's essentially why the industrial era has so many short, distinct periods and upheavals within it; the sausage is being made, though it's ugly to witness.

by staz 3y ago

imtringued 3y ago

That is also what happened to the luddites. Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged. This part is left out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story.

ffgjgf1 3y ago
> Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged That really not true. Nobody forced them to adopt anything (in a literal way). It’s just that automated factories could produce more faster while paying their workers much less since they didn’t require skilled craftsmen. Also artisans generally used a guild/cartel model which artificially constricted supply which inflated their incomes. > out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story. I thought it was pretty obvious to everyone that they were breaking machines because they eliminated demand for high skilled/high pay labour?

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

Yeah, the operators of company towns were violent pricks who didn't much like it that workers increasingly had better options than to die in a mine. That didn't change the economics though. Neither did committing violence against them, which was not only already illegal even then but also wildly unpopular. There's nothing better for workers than a competitive market. What's the boss going to do when the workers have the option to quit and get a better job somewhere else?

conception 3y ago
Get legislation passed like “right to work”, conspire with other business leaders to suppress worker wages/benefits, make striking illegal, etc etc etc.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  "Right to work" is not going to stop anyone from quitting if some other job provides better working conditions. The only reason you need to strike is if there isn't any other employer offering better terms that you can go work for instead. Otherwise you can just threaten to quit unless they meet your terms and actually do it if they don't. Conspiracies only work if the market is concentrated enough; if there are ten thousand employers and it's easy to start a new one then you're not going to be able to hold together a secret illegal cartel. None of those actually work in a competitive market.
  - syntheweave 3y ago
    The market can de-competitiveize itself through non-compete agreements, intellectual property laws, and other barriers to entry. The competitiveness occurs around the "ruleset", which shifts around according to the regulatory environment. The government tends to default to supporting strikebreaking(and still generally does in any era, including this one) because industrialists, financiers and politicians share lines of mutual support: legal ownership of intangibles like a corporation acts as an alternative to feudal fiefdoms and warlords, in that it's less destructive and lets complex processes evolve. Corporations are very effective at putting taxable assets on the books, which allows a more complex state bureaucracy, so politicians end up wanting the support of business for government power and expenditures. Financiers want their thumb on the scale, for the winners they picked to continue winning, rather than to run off and form a competitor. And the industrialists themselves, though they are often at the forefront of the most dramatic reorganizations, tend to get stuck in equilibriums where either they're the evil monopolist, or someone else is. Once you arrive at the equilibrium, the elite players lose their dynamism and are pressured to stay within the existing trends or lose their place. Thus when the Pinkertons or their modern counterparts come in, the officials shrug and say "business as usual, business as usual". The system convulses when it becomes a riot and property is destroyed because that weakens the whole premise: less capital to deploy, fewer assets to tax, failure to return on investment. And people out of a job, but if they were rioting it may have been a crummy job. It creates a shock that can break the equilibrium and enable a different deployment of labor and capital in a new technological environment. That's essentially why the industrial era has so many short, distinct periods and upheavals within it; the sausage is being made, though it's ugly to witness.