5 ms·

Whats wrong with the original luddites that you would try and use them to disparage modern worker rights advocates? They were right. Automation did reduce their

Whats wrong with the original luddites that you would try and use them to disparage modern worker rights advocates? They were right. Automation did reduce their quality of life and destroy their wages, and it is only through the luddites and other worker rights organizations making their demands unignorable that gave workers more modern and fair standards like 40 hour weeks, vacations, safety regulations, and unions. You know who built the looms that the luddites later broke? The luddites themselves. They were the one building automated looms under promises that they would make more money and have cheaper fabric. Instead what they got was towns suffering in poverty under garbage wages, shitty working conditions with longer hours, and worse quality fabric as the corporate looms penny pinched their fibre and fabric more and more. If the benefits of automated looms were actually shared with the luddites to start with, maybe their society wouldn't have gone down the toilet and they wouldn't have been so pissed. And today corporations are far more powerful than the capitalists back in the luddite days, both monetarily and legally.

martin-t 7mo ago
People should own the product of their work. It's really that simple, all the inequality, injustice and exploitation that's been happening since the first industrial revolution keeps happening because people who do the work only get paid a fraction of the value they produced and only as long as they keep working while the surplus and ownership goes to people who don't do any work, can be used to make more money which gives them more ownership and is heritable. BTW, I am really happy whenever I see another person who knows who the luddites really were. The rest are condemned to repeat this shit and we're all worse off because of them.
- auggierose 7mo ago
  > People should own the product of their work. You do own your work, but you agreed to sell it for a salary. Makes sense, because there is often no tangible "product" you could own otherwise. What should cleaners own?
  - AngryData 7mo ago
    Co-op businesses seem to not have a problem sharing the profits on less tangible products and services. So I don't see why anyone should retain sole ownership of all profits from a business that they require others to do the work in.
    - auggierose 7mo ago
      I don't know how co-op businesses work. I think co-ops are hiring cheap third-party cleaners as well. Co-ops also have CEOs making a lot more than the rest of the "cooperative". > So I don't see why anyone should retain sole ownership of all profits from a business that they require others to do the work in. Because they are offering, and there are takers? Nobody is forced to work for your business.
      - martin-t 7mo ago
        > Nobody is forced to work for your business. This is the root of the fallacy - nobody is forced to work for any particular business but everybody is forced to work for some business since 1) starting a new one is more costly than working for an existing one 2) we'd all end up working for 1-person businesses. It's the same as people claiming they are sovereign citizens. It's a nice ideal but it doesn't work.
        auggierose 7mo ago
        No, the mechanism is clear. What I don't understand is your use of the word fallacy. It is not a fallacy, it is the reality. Being an employee is not an ideal. It is the lived reality for most people. So what are you going on about?
        martin-t 7mo ago
        I've has similar discussions multiple times. Each time it boils down to one of these arguments: a) "You're not forced to do it, you chose it so it's consensual and therefore right." b) "The value of your work is determined by how much you managed to negotiate." The issue with a) is that consent has to be informed and between parties with similar bargaining power, neither is true in an employer-employee relationship. Also choice from a limited set of options where some have large artificial upfront costs is not the same as 100% voluntary free choice. The issue with b) is that the product (both the output sold to customers and the organization producing the output which can be sold by the owners) have value. This value is independent of the negotiated compensation for work. Hence, arguments ignoring these issues are fallacious.

martin-t 7mo ago

People should own the product of their work. It's really that simple, all the inequality, injustice and exploitation that's been happening since the first industrial revolution keeps happening because people who do the work only get paid a fraction of the value they produced and only as long as they keep working while the surplus and ownership goes to people who don't do any work, can be used to make more money which gives them more ownership and is heritable. BTW, I am really happy whenever I see another person who knows who the luddites really were. The rest are condemned to repeat this shit and we're all worse off because of them.

auggierose 7mo ago
> People should own the product of their work. You do own your work, but you agreed to sell it for a salary. Makes sense, because there is often no tangible "product" you could own otherwise. What should cleaners own?
- AngryData 7mo ago
  Co-op businesses seem to not have a problem sharing the profits on less tangible products and services. So I don't see why anyone should retain sole ownership of all profits from a business that they require others to do the work in.
  - auggierose 7mo ago
    I don't know how co-op businesses work. I think co-ops are hiring cheap third-party cleaners as well. Co-ops also have CEOs making a lot more than the rest of the "cooperative". > So I don't see why anyone should retain sole ownership of all profits from a business that they require others to do the work in. Because they are offering, and there are takers? Nobody is forced to work for your business.
    - martin-t 7mo ago
      > Nobody is forced to work for your business. This is the root of the fallacy - nobody is forced to work for any particular business but everybody is forced to work for some business since 1) starting a new one is more costly than working for an existing one 2) we'd all end up working for 1-person businesses. It's the same as people claiming they are sovereign citizens. It's a nice ideal but it doesn't work.
      - auggierose 7mo ago
        No, the mechanism is clear. What I don't understand is your use of the word fallacy. It is not a fallacy, it is the reality. Being an employee is not an ideal. It is the lived reality for most people. So what are you going on about?
        martin-t 7mo ago
        I've has similar discussions multiple times. Each time it boils down to one of these arguments: a) "You're not forced to do it, you chose it so it's consensual and therefore right." b) "The value of your work is determined by how much you managed to negotiate." The issue with a) is that consent has to be informed and between parties with similar bargaining power, neither is true in an employer-employee relationship. Also choice from a limited set of options where some have large artificial upfront costs is not the same as 100% voluntary free choice. The issue with b) is that the product (both the output sold to customers and the organization producing the output which can be sold by the owners) have value. This value is independent of the negotiated compensation for work. Hence, arguments ignoring these issues are fallacious.