5 ms·
It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view. " the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machiner
by soperj 5mo ago
It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view.
" the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoAnd yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.
- card_zero 5mo agoDoesn't that just say "a pair of pants"? Or literally one line pants.
- thaumasiotes 5mo ago条 is the appropriate measure word for pants; they're plural in English, but uncountable (like other nouns) in Chinese. You could translate it as "a pair of pants", and that's the appropriate way to put it in English, but really it says "one pants".
- card_zero 5mo agoI guess the measure word works equivalently to a unit of measurement, then. One bottle of beer, one sack of sugar, one 条 of pant.
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoCorrect. In Chinese all nouns require them. (It's not the case, however, that all measure words require nouns. 天 ("day") and 年 ("year") are measure words that are almost always used on their own. There might be an implicit notion of "one day of time" or similar.)
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoYou wouldn't be surprised how often chinese learners say 一双裤子 (one pair of pants) rather than 一条裤子 (one long slender flowing pants).
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoAll learners of Chinese, or just the ones whose native language is English? I figure the most natural mistake to make when counting pants is to use 件, since that's the measure word that applies to "clothes", but you'd have to already know at least some Chinese in order to make that mistake.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoAh, the ones coming from English of course. I don't have much experience in how Koreans or Russians learn Chinese (although I had plenty of non-English classmates when I took language lessons at PKU). I'm thinking more Kouyu than writing. If I didn't think hard about it, I might say yi shuang kuzi or even, for some reason, yi jian kuzi.
- omnimus 5mo agoI think you are misrepresenting the luddites. They were not against technological progress. Many of them were the ones who invented the machines. What they were fighting for were labour rights and distribution of power. They were fighting against enshitification by some guy who stole their collective inventions and by force kicked them out. They were not against more clothes for everyone - quite the opposite. They were against fast fashion bad quality clothes made in horrible conditions by people (or children) who had no other choice.
- izacus 5mo agoI think the case of Luddites shows just how strong anti-worker and anti-union propaganda is - making it a mock word was very effective at preventing uneducated people from understanding what they fought for.
- tao_oat 5mo agoThe Luddites-as-labour-movement view is not entirely wrong, but also misses a lot. They were also an elite group that fought to preserve their own status and the exclusion of women from the industry. I thought this was a pretty good post about it: https://www.verysane.ai/p/against-the-luddites https://www.verysane.ai/p/against-the-luddites
- omnimus 5mo agoI am no expert but from books I've read on the topic. It was also pretty diverse movement as is usual with decentralized movements like this. There absolutely were lower class people present who saw it as labour movement. In other words. The Luddites as elite group that fought to preserve status view is not entirely wrong, but also misses a lot. In context of audience here - programmers (elite group). You can say that programmers fighting with AI do it to preserve their own status. Or we might trust those (like geohot) who are angry because it's just leading to bad results. It's enshitification - of the result, the working conditions, the ethics. The whole chain.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo ago
- torben-friis 5mo ago>the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” That's pants as opposed to skirts. It's a gender implication, not a scarcity one.
- t-3 5mo agoYou're right for the english version, but the Chinese version is IIRC a family that shares one pair of pants - the person who needs to go outside wears the proper clothes.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoI was only aware of the Chinese version because my friend explained it to me on my first trip to yunnan in 2002. I always thought the English version descended from the Chinese version, not that they were separate. Oops.
- bruce511 5mo agoGoods are usually (although not always) inferior when made by a machine. A hand-crafted solid wood table is still superior to something from Ikea. Of course hand made tables are expensive. They service a sliver of the market. Ikea serves the rest of us who'd prefer not to eat off the floor. Fundamentally, Luddites didn't like being replaced by a machine. They were skilled workers, who used to have very desirable skills. Most people didn't need their standard of quality (but customers had no choice.) Their name is well known today because we never stopped replacing people with machines. Every industry as been "optimized" over and over again since the Luddite times. AI is the first threat to the Artisans of today (ie programmers). We are just the most recent in a long history of Luddites. In every change of this nature, some move on embracing the change, others do not. Some will find other jobs, possibly new jobs, others won't. Carriage drivers became Chauffeurs, some grooms became mechanics. So sure, I'm a Luddite - I don't want to see my skills become cheap - but I'm also pragmatic. The change is here. I'd rather adapt than die.
- torben-friis 5mo ago>Of course hand made tables are expensive. They service a sliver of the market. Ikea serves the rest of us who'd prefer not to eat off the floor. And yet my working class grandparents didn't eat off the floor, they had great quality tables. Mine is made of disguised cardboard. This is a big part of the problem, there is zero trust that any potential improvement in cost or access will reach consumers. Companies don't even bother telling us it will. We will just be slowly moved into accepting a degradation as the new normal.
- ponector 5mo agoHow many hours it was required for them to work to earn money for that table? The truth is people mostly want not an improved version but cheaper one.
- scrollaway 5mo agoThe cost improvements reached you, you just don't see them in the table quality. You see them in the fact that every single home you'll visit to buy or rent has a fully equipped kitchen including a fridge, oven, likely a microwave, dishwasher and even a washing machine (which alone has a huge economic impact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gvsz_vc7B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gvsz_vc7B0) You see it in the fact that your home is safer from fires than it ever has been. That hot water is a cheap passive thing you don't even think about, rather than something you have to plan for. That a TV is a nice add-on to it all, rather than a huge deal to get. Your grandparents' table was more expensive because they had less things, and the massive wood table that they saved months for was what was kept and stood the test of time for you to see today. Because let's not forget, this is also what furnishing 100 years ago can look like: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/furnishing-for-hotel-room-news-photo-1595471952.jpg https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/furnishing-for-h...
- notarobot123 5mo agoIn the end, the worst part wasn't just loosing artisan jobs and destroying the market for crafted goods. The second order effect was to create a new kind of drudgery in the repetitive and sometimes dangerous work of maintaining the operations of the machine. It created a class of workers who were completely dependent on these kinds of jobs.