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The luddite example is one of suddenness: The owners see the massive advantage of mechanization and move in fast. The workers are blindsided - they don't have t

• tibbydudeza 3y ago
  I remember the mantra of some in the tech field of "no problem - just learn to code" when blue collar jobs in the manufacturing in the US was on the wane as production moved to cheaper locations overseas.
  • kdmccormick 3y ago
    I think that is a good point to bring up, but it is orthogonal. Production moving overseas is not the same as technological advancement. One can be against outsourcing but in favor of domestic technological progress.
    • tibbydudeza 3y ago
      We all want our cheap TV's at Walmart but sadly people in general don't think of the bigger consequences of wanting low bargain basement prices for consumer good or paying low to little tax. Yet they complain about joblessness and how the education system and their neighborhood/towns are going to the balls.
      • carlosjobim 3y ago
        Taxes is also a big part of why manufacturing is expensive in some places. If they were removed, the savings could be passed on to the customers.
        • supertimor 3y ago
          You really think that the savings will actually be passed onto the consumer rather than the company gobbling up that extra value? Also, if taxes are lowered on businesses, the tax burden will be passed to the working poor/middle class.
          • carlosjobim 3y ago
            > You really think that the savings will actually be passed onto the consumer rather than the company gobbling up that extra value? Absolutely yes. Compare gas prices in countries with high taxes on gas and countries with low taxes on gas. Compare products that are subject to vice taxes. It is not hypothetical, it's reality. > Also, if taxes are lowered on businesses, the tax burden will be passed to the working poor/middle class. All taxes on businesses are passed onto the consumers already. For businesses that sell products and services that everybody uses, that means the taxes are passed on the working poor and middle class. The only way to have taxes explicitly excluding the poor and middle class is to have tariffs on luxury goods, and maybe vice taxes since those products are not essential. There's no doubt that many company owners would try to use any tax reduction to make more profit for themselves, but that leaves space for competitors to take market share.
      • yterdy 3y ago
  • hef19898 3y ago
    So, can we use "just learn to use promps" for white collar folks and software devs risk loosing their jobs because of AI?
    • krapp 3y ago
      We've been using it for the artists and writers and everyone else, so what's good for the goose is good for the gander I guess.
    • notsurenymore 3y ago
      I thought it was “just go into the trades”.
  • throwuwu 3y ago
    Woah woah woah buddy you’ve got that completely backwards. Journalists started that whole learn to code bullshit and then got justly lampooned about it when there were a bunch of media lay offs afterwards. It was a huge meme a while back so I’m not sure how you missed it.
    • bamboozled 3y ago
      It doesn’t matter who said it, people bought it, used it and spread it.
      • booleandilemma 3y ago
        Yeah but he's correcting the parent, who said "the mantra of some in the tech field", which is wrong.
  • throwaway290 3y ago
    No need to look too far back, the similar big bait and switch by ClosedAI/Microsoft is happening right now.
  • creer 3y ago
    It turns out manufacturing is actually doing fine in the US as an industry. Just very different and probably employing higher skilled machinists (and at CNC machines). But meanwhile Denmark has been making a go at a constructive, thought out, response. Perhaps let's look at how that works - who retrains for what? (Which I don't know in detail.)
  • ralfd 3y ago
    Hu? The "learn to code" was not coming from the tech field itself (programmers know that coding is hard and FAANG are not hiring coal miners), but used as a dig against out-of-touch journalists who wrote articles like that: https://imgur.com/TKX47O3 https://imgur.com/TKX47O3 … and, well, infamously Joe Biden in his 2019 campaign: https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/476391-biden-tells-coal-miners-to-learn-to-code/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/47... > Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from the audience.
• makeitdouble 3y ago
  Well put. To note, luddites' issues were not just losing their job. Let's remember that the earlier machines were very crude, safety was absolutely not in their design, and a worker life's also didn't have much weight. So, the early days of machine assisted production were in inhumane conditions, people losing limbs, kids getting killed in them (less skills needed also meant kid labour was a viable option) etc. So yes, regulation on how the machines work, how much they get introduced, how the workers are impacted, trial periods to see the impacts etc. should help a lot in all respects. The difficult part being that those all mean putting breaks on profit making.
  • hef19898 3y ago
    Even more cynical, small kids were sent into said machines to conduct maintenance while the machine was running!
    • creer 3y ago
      Yes to this chain. Noticing this absurd lack of machine safety and doing something about it would have helped everyone. And the government reaction to the whole thing was equally absurd.
      • Joker_vD 3y ago
        > the government reaction to the whole thing was equally absurd. It, however, would later give Marx a nice example of how the government is the tool that the ruling class uses to oppress the working classes and get their way: because when seen from this angle, the reaction was entirely reasonable.
        • glimshe 3y ago
          While originating in Marxism, this thought is also exposed by Libertarians in their critique of government. Giving too much power to the government is basically the same as giving power to elites and thus it is a move against freedom.
• xorcist 3y ago
  Your comments fall into exactly the trap the article talks about. The luddites were painted as being against automation. That's only partially true, at best. Destroying machines was not the point. It was just the only thing that hurt and got remembered. It was not layoffs that caused the revolts much worsening working conditions. They wanted things like getting paid in the promised time frame, and not having their children killed. It seems the protests were sprawling and later integrated every disappointment under the sun. The other side took that as an opportunity to paint them as being generally anti progressive and against all forms of mechanization, but from what I understand there's not much to suggest that was actually true. Yes, machines were broken but so were a lot of other things as the protests turned violent. Our lesson from the luddies should be that winners write history, we should not reiterate a centuries old smear campaign.
  • creer 3y ago
    > It was not layoffs that caused the revolts much worsening working conditions. I read the article (twice - it's interesting), and I wrote "spend all the time they do have in a ludicrous war". For the workers of the time it looked probably like a fast combination of things. Which the author kinda summarizes as "the inequitable profitability of machines". Things likely included: at first a boom in employment: the factories started at the same time the old, somewhat distributed production method mostly continued - but probably with minimal worker freedom of choice as to who went to which. Then layoffs as the old method just about disappears and more factories start or fail in seemingly (to the workers) random occurences. Then working conditions as factories no doubt did not start safe or comfortable. Then like you say every complaint under the sun. I don't think it matters actually: the workers reacted to upheaval and probably felt they had no time to be heard. That's the complaint we hear now: "The current jobs are going and that's not right". That's the point of my response: "How does that help anything or anyone?". The lesson should be to try responses that actually have a chance to succeed as opposed to getting in the papers for (metaphorically) breaking frames. Denmark and Co seem to have thought up something in the right general direction.
  • devinjon 3y ago
    At times, the destruction was also quite utilitarian. For example, if you destroyed a piece of agricultural equipment, and it took three months to get another one up from London, you and your chums had work for the season. That's an entirely rational course of action (though not necessarily the most effective or moral one).
• sandworm101 3y ago
  >> to recognize a looming availability of human workforce which might be useful for some (other) business opportunity. In other words: a cheap labor force of people now desperate enough to accept lower compensation that their previous employment. If these later employers were able/willing to pay a similar wage, they would have already been doing so. Predicting a forthcoming a wave of despite people as a business opportunity, a chance to pay people lower wages tomorrow than you would have to today ... that is a dark sentiment. I think twitter is going to fail, but I'm going to wait on launching my new startup until the market is flooded with x-twitter employees willing to work for peanuts. Dark.
  • creer 3y ago
    You can call it dark, or you can hire the many fine software people laid off from the twitter ridiculosity. Your choice. The job market is strange currently. Low unemployement rate (in part because of how many people withdrew). Businesses complaining they can't find people (some in part because they offer too little money). Many perenially underemployed. Absurd hiring processes (because of perceived cost of hiring the wrong person rather than nobody at all.) My point is that simply "calling it dark" is not helpful to any of the participants.
• deleted 3y ago
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• avgcorrection 3y ago
  Under the current regime jobs can be automated away and the businesses will reap 100% of the profit unless there is a union standing in its way: AI could be used on footage of a day's work some actor and recreate their likeness forever. Paid for one day, then the derived work is owned by the business forever. We could for example say that 90% of jobs get automated away. The benefit for the businesses are astronomical as all those jobs get turned into direct profit. Meanwhile the workers get the change to... upskill? Yeah, so they just have to “upskill” forever while the businesses get free profit because they sit on the means of automation. (Remind me how the businesses have to put in work, here? Seems like they only get the upsides while the workers get all the downsides.) Until there is nothing to upskill into anymore because only 12% of the labor pool is needed for actual work. The notion that workers and employers are anywhere near to being peer competitors is bizarre.
• rakoo 3y ago
  Your proposed solution doesn't solve anything, it only delays it. As long as workers are not self-organizing, top to bottom, up to and including what to produce, how much to priduce and how to produce it, the domination will exist. What is the added value to the society of having bosses ? Of having people not producing but deciding how to produce ? Scratch the destruction of machines, the sudden uprise, the distinction between what group acted and what group negotiated. The real lesson to learn from this all: society doesn't need someone telling you what to do if they're not also a worker.