More people need to understand the actual history of the luddites. The real issue was the usage of mechanized equipment to overwhelm an entire sector of the eco

More people need to understand the actual history of the luddites. The real issue was the usage of mechanized equipment to overwhelm an entire sector of the economy of the day - destroying the labor value of a vast swath of craftspeople and knocking them down a peg on the social ladder. Those people who were able to get work were now subject to a much more dangerous workplace and forced into a more rigid legalized employer/employee structure, which was a relatively new "corporate innovation" in the grand scheme of things. This, of course, allowed/required the state to be on the hook for enforcement of the workplace contract, and you can bet that both public and private police forces were used to enforce that contract with violence. Certainly something to think about for all the users on this message board who are undoubtedly more highly skilled craftspeople than most, and would never be caught up in a mass economic displacement driven by the introduction of a new technological innovation. At the very least, it's worth a skim through the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite