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"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." - George Carlin The luddites are also what happens when a group of people who have a historical c

"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." - George Carlin The luddites are also what happens when a group of people who have a historical corner on a market revolt. IF we let them have their way a shirt would be 8k (at 15 bucks an hour) https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-lesson-in.html https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-... Further, those looms, they evolve to jacquard looms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine) , that are backed by the punchcard. Primitive numerical control at its finest! The fountainhead for Babbage and Lady Ada to conceptualize computing! IN the end the luddites were skilled labor (the gig economy for the most part isn't). They were being displaced by mass production. Something that happens over and over again (bricks, files, pots...). Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations, the internet and hacker news. The price of progress, haiving to keep up with it.

sgu999 3y ago
> Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations, the internet and hacker news. I believe you forgot to mention that it also led us to ruin our environment in the process. Not trying to argue that we should always oppose "progress", but maybe there was a better middle ground of shared prosperity a bit before Deliveroo, Amazon and Shein.
- hef19898 3y ago
  The reason we have vacation, health care, a social net, <70 hours, Edit: no more (the pleasure of writing on mobile sometimes...) 6 day work weeks and all that is because workers (blue collar, as oppossed to pampered white collar like the majority of us on HN) fought tooth and nail for it. Thosen riviledges we enjoy are bot something that came automazically during the industrial revolution. And assuming it will different this time is a grave mistake.
  - dotcoma 3y ago
    > <70 hours, 6 day work weeks… Where do you live? The standard, at least in Europe, is 40 hours and 5-day work weeks.
    - jampekka 3y ago
      At least per my calculation 40 < 70. In my country at least the 40 hour workweek required a civil war and a couple of general strikes.
      - dotcoma 3y ago
        It’s also true that 40 < 100, for that matter.
franga2000 3y ago
What do you mean by "let them have their way"? If the factory owners had paid them a living wage to operate the machines instead of replacing them with literal child slaves, the prices would still have gone down and the same innovations would have happened. > Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations... The word "all" here is excluding far, far more people than you realise. Your "better world" is built on the suffering of hundreds of millions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  > If the factory owners had paid them a living wage to operate the machines instead of replacing them with literal child slaves I never said the factory owners were the good guys. But let's take your very contemporaneous hot take and play it out. 1. The weavers were skilled labor. The industrial process was so easy a child could do it. The fair pay for operating that machine was never going to be equal to the weavers wage. 2. The difference in rate of production was massive. This wasn't a price drop, it was the floor falling out. Think 1 person now able to produce as much as 500 weavers. The weavers didn't give a shit about kids or fair wage! They simply were being replaced and mad about the loss of income! Even if they had been hired on by the factory owners, there would have been enough of them unemployed (500 to 1) that it was going to play out the same way! > The word "all" here is excluding far, far more people than you realise. Your "better world" is built on the suffering of hundreds of millions. Yes, no more polio, no more rindapest, most of the globe has a cell phone and access to a wealth of knowledge... we didn't die of bubonic plague, we dont have dead siblings or dead mothers in child birth.... It's a much better world. Im also acutely aware of the human suffering in my PC from cobolt, and rare earths! With a nice side of environmental damage. I'm well aware that the coffee I drink and the chocolate I eat is a product of child labor. I'm aware that by earning more than 100k a year I'm in the top 10% of the global population. There is no point in moralizing about it, because there is no point in the past where it was "better" than right now! We as a people are making progress and until that stops being true we need to be grateful were at the top and keep moving everyone forward...
nabla9 3y ago
> enough free time for vacations, Industrialization didn't provide free time automatically. There was a huge political power struggle for higher wages and more free time. That was sometimes bloody and violent even in democracies. Labor organizers had to fight really hard to get it trough.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  It didn't provide free time at all - quite the opposite: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
jampekka 3y ago
A slight problem is that the benefits of the increased efficiency go extremely lopsidedly to those who own the new means of production. And notably by the merit of ownership, not by e.g. inventing or building the new systems.
avgcorrection 3y ago
> Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations, the internet and hacker news. Attend a May Day celebration sometime. (Not to be confused with the American Loyalty Day or Veteran’s Day or whatever it is now.) It is one of the few times that you get reminded that things like the weekend being free time is not something that comes automatically out of a factory.
hgomersall 3y ago
How much free time do people have in pre-industrial societies? Do they need "free" time? If you don't agree it's "progress", are you wrong?
- Geisterde 3y ago
  >How much free time do people have in pre-industrial societies? 0.0hrs/week >Do they need "free" time? That free time is where quite a bit of societies progress comes from. Its an oversubscribed cpu, nonessential processes will hang for forever. For you, that means no cell phone, no heat in the winter, no ac in the summer, you are permanently starving, your feet are covered in cuts from walking with poor quality shoes, you will be dead by 35 without intervention. What would you say, do they need it?
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    I think your understanding of pre-industrial societies needs recalibrating. Not least on the question of how much free time they had (that is, most people worked fewer hours than most people now). A better question to ask is whether we are happier now. I suspect not on average.

sgu999 3y ago

> Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations, the internet and hacker news. I believe you forgot to mention that it also led us to ruin our environment in the process. Not trying to argue that we should always oppose "progress", but maybe there was a better middle ground of shared prosperity a bit before Deliveroo, Amazon and Shein.

hef19898 3y ago
The reason we have vacation, health care, a social net, <70 hours, Edit: no more (the pleasure of writing on mobile sometimes...) 6 day work weeks and all that is because workers (blue collar, as oppossed to pampered white collar like the majority of us on HN) fought tooth and nail for it. Thosen riviledges we enjoy are bot something that came automazically during the industrial revolution. And assuming it will different this time is a grave mistake.
- dotcoma 3y ago
  > <70 hours, 6 day work weeks… Where do you live? The standard, at least in Europe, is 40 hours and 5-day work weeks.
  - jampekka 3y ago
    At least per my calculation 40 < 70. In my country at least the 40 hour workweek required a civil war and a couple of general strikes.
    - dotcoma 3y ago
      It’s also true that 40 < 100, for that matter.

franga2000 3y ago

What do you mean by "let them have their way"? If the factory owners had paid them a living wage to operate the machines instead of replacing them with literal child slaves, the prices would still have gone down and the same innovations would have happened. > Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations... The word "all" here is excluding far, far more people than you realise. Your "better world" is built on the suffering of hundreds of millions.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zer00eyz 3y ago
> If the factory owners had paid them a living wage to operate the machines instead of replacing them with literal child slaves I never said the factory owners were the good guys. But let's take your very contemporaneous hot take and play it out. 1. The weavers were skilled labor. The industrial process was so easy a child could do it. The fair pay for operating that machine was never going to be equal to the weavers wage. 2. The difference in rate of production was massive. This wasn't a price drop, it was the floor falling out. Think 1 person now able to produce as much as 500 weavers. The weavers didn't give a shit about kids or fair wage! They simply were being replaced and mad about the loss of income! Even if they had been hired on by the factory owners, there would have been enough of them unemployed (500 to 1) that it was going to play out the same way! > The word "all" here is excluding far, far more people than you realise. Your "better world" is built on the suffering of hundreds of millions. Yes, no more polio, no more rindapest, most of the globe has a cell phone and access to a wealth of knowledge... we didn't die of bubonic plague, we dont have dead siblings or dead mothers in child birth.... It's a much better world. Im also acutely aware of the human suffering in my PC from cobolt, and rare earths! With a nice side of environmental damage. I'm well aware that the coffee I drink and the chocolate I eat is a product of child labor. I'm aware that by earning more than 100k a year I'm in the top 10% of the global population. There is no point in moralizing about it, because there is no point in the past where it was "better" than right now! We as a people are making progress and until that stops being true we need to be grateful were at the top and keep moving everyone forward...

nabla9 3y ago

> enough free time for vacations, Industrialization didn't provide free time automatically. There was a huge political power struggle for higher wages and more free time. That was sometimes bloody and violent even in democracies. Labor organizers had to fight really hard to get it trough.

hgomersall 3y ago
It didn't provide free time at all - quite the opposite: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

jampekka 3y ago

A slight problem is that the benefits of the increased efficiency go extremely lopsidedly to those who own the new means of production. And notably by the merit of ownership, not by e.g. inventing or building the new systems.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Industrialization led to us all having enough free time for vacations, the internet and hacker news. Attend a May Day celebration sometime. (Not to be confused with the American Loyalty Day or Veteran’s Day or whatever it is now.) It is one of the few times that you get reminded that things like the weekend being free time is not something that comes automatically out of a factory.

hgomersall 3y ago

How much free time do people have in pre-industrial societies? Do they need "free" time? If you don't agree it's "progress", are you wrong?

Geisterde 3y ago
>How much free time do people have in pre-industrial societies? 0.0hrs/week >Do they need "free" time? That free time is where quite a bit of societies progress comes from. Its an oversubscribed cpu, nonessential processes will hang for forever. For you, that means no cell phone, no heat in the winter, no ac in the summer, you are permanently starving, your feet are covered in cuts from walking with poor quality shoes, you will be dead by 35 without intervention. What would you say, do they need it?
- hgomersall 3y ago
  I think your understanding of pre-industrial societies needs recalibrating. Not least on the question of how much free time they had (that is, most people worked fewer hours than most people now). A better question to ask is whether we are happier now. I suspect not on average.