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Maybe the loom smashers should have won. I'm not sure we ended up on the better timeline.

Legend2440 3mo ago
Prior to industrialization everyone was broke and people regularly starved. If the loom smashers had their way, we'd still be dirt farmers living in abject poverty.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Post-industrialization, same thing but the starving broke people are far away and speak a different language
- tadfisher 3mo ago
  Perhaps. On the other hand, the limiting factor for automation was never human labor, it was energy input. We went all-in on oil extraction and transformed it into energy and plastics and crops, to push the human population to 10x its size. Ironically, doing so multiplied the absolute number of people living in abject poverty.
ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
Yesterday I watched Bernadette Banner visit a Loom Museum and try them out for herself. A few takeaways: 1. Looms were a serious physical workout, and could honestly be hard on one's body 2. The mechanical looms they operated were pre-electric, pre-industrial, but still incredibly complex and amazingly fast compared to previous iterations 3. The operators of looms, living in abject poverty, took these jobs so that they could eat and support their families, and incidentally became the top experts on weaving cloth during their lifetimes, which all basically collapsed when looms were automated and mechanized.
- Legend2440 3mo ago
  But also, it is important to remember that automating and mechanizing is what brought society as a whole out of abject poverty. It would be very short-sighted to look only at the jobs lost by the few weavers, and not the wealth gained by everyone else.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    You mean the wealth gained by the ruling nobility of the time. As they said, the loom operators were worked to the bone for almost no pay.
    - Legend2440 3mo ago
      No, I mean the wealth you and I have right now. All of it - the car, the iPhone, the healthcare, the indoor plumbing, the air conditioner, the closet full of clothes - is only possible because of automation.
      - tadfisher 3mo ago
        There are multiple billions of people alive, right now, who have none of those things.
        Legend2440 3mo ago
        Yeah, people who live in areas that are poorly industrialized (Africa, India, etc) and whose lives have not yet been blessed with automation.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        They are not "poorly industrialised", they are the other half of industrialisation. Think of the Rick and Morty episode where they split themselves into good halves and bad halves.
        Legend2440 3mo ago
        The industrialization of rich nations did not make Africa poor. Once upon a time, everyone was poor. Then, some countries industrialized and others didn't. The ones that didn't are still poor today. Some countries like China have recently pulled themselves out of poverty through industrialization. Someday Africa will do the same.

Prior to industrialization everyone was broke and people regularly starved. If the loom smashers had their way, we'd still be dirt farmers living in abject poverty.

inigyou 3mo ago
Post-industrialization, same thing but the starving broke people are far away and speak a different language
tadfisher 3mo ago
Perhaps. On the other hand, the limiting factor for automation was never human labor, it was energy input. We went all-in on oil extraction and transformed it into energy and plastics and crops, to push the human population to 10x its size. Ironically, doing so multiplied the absolute number of people living in abject poverty.

ButlerianJihad 3mo ago

Yesterday I watched Bernadette Banner visit a Loom Museum and try them out for herself. A few takeaways: 1. Looms were a serious physical workout, and could honestly be hard on one's body 2. The mechanical looms they operated were pre-electric, pre-industrial, but still incredibly complex and amazingly fast compared to previous iterations 3. The operators of looms, living in abject poverty, took these jobs so that they could eat and support their families, and incidentally became the top experts on weaving cloth during their lifetimes, which all basically collapsed when looms were automated and mechanized.

Legend2440 3mo ago
But also, it is important to remember that automating and mechanizing is what brought society as a whole out of abject poverty. It would be very short-sighted to look only at the jobs lost by the few weavers, and not the wealth gained by everyone else.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You mean the wealth gained by the ruling nobility of the time. As they said, the loom operators were worked to the bone for almost no pay.
  - Legend2440 3mo ago
    No, I mean the wealth you and I have right now. All of it - the car, the iPhone, the healthcare, the indoor plumbing, the air conditioner, the closet full of clothes - is only possible because of automation.
    - tadfisher 3mo ago
      There are multiple billions of people alive, right now, who have none of those things.
      - Legend2440 3mo ago
        Yeah, people who live in areas that are poorly industrialized (Africa, India, etc) and whose lives have not yet been blessed with automation.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        They are not "poorly industrialised", they are the other half of industrialisation. Think of the Rick and Morty episode where they split themselves into good halves and bad halves.
        Legend2440 3mo ago
        The industrialization of rich nations did not make Africa poor. Once upon a time, everyone was poor. Then, some countries industrialized and others didn't. The ones that didn't are still poor today. Some countries like China have recently pulled themselves out of poverty through industrialization. Someday Africa will do the same.