11 ms·

Why You Should Be a Luddite

63 points by spost 3y ago

addminztrator 3y ago
[flagged]
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > Ted Kaczynski would be proud. He'd also be a literal mad genius but still... You know he killed people, right?
  - addminztrator 3y ago
    Well I did say he was mad. Isn't that the logical conclusion of being a luddite though?
  - stormfather 3y ago
    He was right about most things though, just wrong in his solution.
  - aaron695 3y ago
    [dead]
cupcakecommons 3y ago
[flagged]
bloppe 3y ago
If automation is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, then Luddism is the exploitation of consumers by workers. I don't want to be legally forced to pay double the price for clothing just because some well-connected weavers enacted regulation to ban more efficient competition.
- ambientenv 3y ago
  Because it's all about, and only about, you. Yes?
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    > Because it's all about, and only about, you. Yes? Yes, it is about the collective "you," and always has been. To suggest otherwise is preposterous.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Everyone is a consumer, it’s all of us. It’s not just that you’re artificially keeping prices high, in a globalist world, someone else would do it and all the workers would lose their jobs.
  - bloppe 3y ago
    Despite sounding like it's zero-sum, fighting for the consumer is actually the only way to lift everybody up. Fighting for workers specifically is playing favorites. Fighting for the ownership class is also playing favorites. Focusing on consumers makes everybody a winner over time.
    - rainonmoon 3y ago
      Workers are consumers. A healthier working class and a more even distribution of wealth provides increased purchasing power. If all you can see is what you'd lose and not imagine what you'd gain, that's a fault of imagination, not the proposal.
      - bloppe 3y ago
        I feel like you're arguing against me, but I could also take your comment verbatim and feel like it backs up my side. Favoring consumers means everybody gets their fair share.
    - arp242 3y ago
      "Fighting for workers" means "don't have child labour", and "don't have machines that regularly amputate people's limbs", and those types of things. And "fighting for the consumer" is how we ended up with low-wage countries with little safety regulations making our stuff, and occasionally dying for it. This is also how we ended up with all sorts of other negative externalities ranging from worker exploitation to environmental impact. You can't capture reality in simplistic one-liners.
xref 3y ago
Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. Their dispute is best understood not as being over “technology” but about who gets the benefit of new technologies and who decides what kinds of technologies will be implemented
- paxys 3y ago
  It's a bullshit argument either way. Say it's 1800 and you need 100 workers to make a new suit, which costs as much as one's annual rent (yes, really). Suddenly machines show up and can make the same suit with 10 workers and at 1/10 the cost. The other 90 workers are outraged, break machines and cry about "enriching capitalists at the expense of laborers". What is the solution exactly? Should the average household continue to spend 20% of their income on clothing just because a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely.
  - thesandlord 3y ago
    I think a portion of people would say yes, it's better to keep the status quo. Imo progress always wins because eventually someone somewhere will break the taboo. Technology even gets lost and rediscovered, which means even if you supress the knowledge someone will still eventually do it. So it's pretty pointless to fight, I'd rather try to benefit from it.
  - arp242 3y ago
    > a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely. In the context of 1800s industrial revolution, this means employing child labour, hugely unsafe machines that cause amputations and death, draconian death penalties against the Luddites, long working hours, and things like that. All for a small pitiful wage. THAT is what this is about: outright exploitation that would be spectacularly illegal in well-organized countries today, and is called things like "de-facto slavery" in places where it still happens. If not having these things is "subsidizing" people then one of us doesn't know what that word means.
apantel 3y ago
Only a Luddite would have the attention span to read that long of an article. Alas, I am not a Luddite.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Can you explain what you mean here because this mostly sounds like a self own? Ultimately, the luddites are just trying to prevent capital from destroying the working class. Not that this would be apparent because nobody read... The Fucking Article
  - apantel 3y ago
    It was a joke: technology has collapsed the attention span, therefore Luddites would have long attention spans; only someone with a long attention span would be able to read a long-form article like this one.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
barrysteve 3y ago
The article waffles on without providing any real insight or solutions. The key solution is technology that empowers men. - Self-driving cars should be an option for drivers to flick on and off at will. - Mechanized looms should be custom built to enhance the craft. - Computers should submit to their user's will and design. None of that is guarenteed to continue. Corporatized technology devours resources, and subverts human authority - with dark patterns and authoritarian policy. Automation homogenizes the input and output, making products the same. When every resource is under computer control, there won't be any need to have a capitalist own the profits. There won't be a need for employees to buy the output. The concept of new startups will be flattened out by centralized resource control. The technological revolution eats it's own future. Why bother being a luddite? The prognosis for technology is already terminal. Let's accelerate the decline.
- AstralStorm 3y ago
  Production line (which is not synonymous with automation) is suspected to be the transitional stage until we can make everything customized for cheap. (See developments such as in 3D printing, of so many things. We cannot 3d print microchip fabs or high vacuum tech... yet.) Then it's the design where a bit more time is required. Given sufficient development artisanship and variety in design would be the actual rule. I raise you decentralized/federated democratic resource control. A bunch of items can be also made from interesting abundant materials, ultimately making them available is the challenge. (Gimme that glass and carbon nanotube 3D printer. And a home EUV lithography machine. We can already make a sputtering chamber almost on the cheap...) Anything else you want to add before you prematurely condemn technology?
andrewinardeer 3y ago
If the mob went in and destroyed AI that was taking their jobs would they be branded Luddites?

63 points by spost 3y ago

addminztrator 3y ago

[flagged]

thelastparadise 3y ago
> Ted Kaczynski would be proud. He'd also be a literal mad genius but still... You know he killed people, right?
- addminztrator 3y ago
  Well I did say he was mad. Isn't that the logical conclusion of being a luddite though?
- stormfather 3y ago
  He was right about most things though, just wrong in his solution.
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]

cupcakecommons 3y ago

[flagged]

bloppe 3y ago

If automation is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, then Luddism is the exploitation of consumers by workers. I don't want to be legally forced to pay double the price for clothing just because some well-connected weavers enacted regulation to ban more efficient competition.

ambientenv 3y ago
Because it's all about, and only about, you. Yes?
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > Because it's all about, and only about, you. Yes? Yes, it is about the collective "you," and always has been. To suggest otherwise is preposterous.
- huytersd 3y ago
  Everyone is a consumer, it’s all of us. It’s not just that you’re artificially keeping prices high, in a globalist world, someone else would do it and all the workers would lose their jobs.
- bloppe 3y ago
  Despite sounding like it's zero-sum, fighting for the consumer is actually the only way to lift everybody up. Fighting for workers specifically is playing favorites. Fighting for the ownership class is also playing favorites. Focusing on consumers makes everybody a winner over time.
  - rainonmoon 3y ago
    Workers are consumers. A healthier working class and a more even distribution of wealth provides increased purchasing power. If all you can see is what you'd lose and not imagine what you'd gain, that's a fault of imagination, not the proposal.
    - bloppe 3y ago
      I feel like you're arguing against me, but I could also take your comment verbatim and feel like it backs up my side. Favoring consumers means everybody gets their fair share.
  - arp242 3y ago
    "Fighting for workers" means "don't have child labour", and "don't have machines that regularly amputate people's limbs", and those types of things. And "fighting for the consumer" is how we ended up with low-wage countries with little safety regulations making our stuff, and occasionally dying for it. This is also how we ended up with all sorts of other negative externalities ranging from worker exploitation to environmental impact. You can't capture reality in simplistic one-liners.

xref 3y ago

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. Their dispute is best understood not as being over “technology” but about who gets the benefit of new technologies and who decides what kinds of technologies will be implemented

paxys 3y ago
It's a bullshit argument either way. Say it's 1800 and you need 100 workers to make a new suit, which costs as much as one's annual rent (yes, really). Suddenly machines show up and can make the same suit with 10 workers and at 1/10 the cost. The other 90 workers are outraged, break machines and cry about "enriching capitalists at the expense of laborers". What is the solution exactly? Should the average household continue to spend 20% of their income on clothing just because a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely.
- thesandlord 3y ago
  I think a portion of people would say yes, it's better to keep the status quo. Imo progress always wins because eventually someone somewhere will break the taboo. Technology even gets lost and rediscovered, which means even if you supress the knowledge someone will still eventually do it. So it's pretty pointless to fight, I'd rather try to benefit from it.
- arp242 3y ago
  > a small subset of workers needs to be subsidized indefinitely. In the context of 1800s industrial revolution, this means employing child labour, hugely unsafe machines that cause amputations and death, draconian death penalties against the Luddites, long working hours, and things like that. All for a small pitiful wage. THAT is what this is about: outright exploitation that would be spectacularly illegal in well-organized countries today, and is called things like "de-facto slavery" in places where it still happens. If not having these things is "subsidizing" people then one of us doesn't know what that word means.

apantel 3y ago

Only a Luddite would have the attention span to read that long of an article. Alas, I am not a Luddite.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Can you explain what you mean here because this mostly sounds like a self own? Ultimately, the luddites are just trying to prevent capital from destroying the working class. Not that this would be apparent because nobody read... The Fucking Article
- apantel 3y ago
  It was a joke: technology has collapsed the attention span, therefore Luddites would have long attention spans; only someone with a long attention span would be able to read a long-form article like this one.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

barrysteve 3y ago

The article waffles on without providing any real insight or solutions. The key solution is technology that empowers men. - Self-driving cars should be an option for drivers to flick on and off at will. - Mechanized looms should be custom built to enhance the craft. - Computers should submit to their user's will and design. None of that is guarenteed to continue. Corporatized technology devours resources, and subverts human authority - with dark patterns and authoritarian policy. Automation homogenizes the input and output, making products the same. When every resource is under computer control, there won't be any need to have a capitalist own the profits. There won't be a need for employees to buy the output. The concept of new startups will be flattened out by centralized resource control. The technological revolution eats it's own future. Why bother being a luddite? The prognosis for technology is already terminal. Let's accelerate the decline.

AstralStorm 3y ago
Production line (which is not synonymous with automation) is suspected to be the transitional stage until we can make everything customized for cheap. (See developments such as in 3D printing, of so many things. We cannot 3d print microchip fabs or high vacuum tech... yet.) Then it's the design where a bit more time is required. Given sufficient development artisanship and variety in design would be the actual rule. I raise you decentralized/federated democratic resource control. A bunch of items can be also made from interesting abundant materials, ultimately making them available is the challenge. (Gimme that glass and carbon nanotube 3D printer. And a home EUV lithography machine. We can already make a sputtering chamber almost on the cheap...) Anything else you want to add before you prematurely condemn technology?

andrewinardeer 3y ago

If the mob went in and destroyed AI that was taking their jobs would they be branded Luddites?