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Rethinking the Luddites

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Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#101

Post by deevolution »

w_for_wumbo wrote: post #3

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us…

I think the compensation comes in the form of lower prices, greater availability of the products, a higher standard of living and newly gained freedom for the worker. They can do something else now. The compensation maybe isn't as explicit or obvious as receiving an "automation dividend" check every month. That's what securities are for!

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#102

Post by gumballindie »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #14

People are happy to use tech like wix to build a web page because building web pages is hard. Virtually every designer, artist, writer, and musician, were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers. “Finally I can do what these nerds can do without their help”. I really don’t see the difference.

> were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers.

What?

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#103

Post by ethanbond »

deevolution wrote: post #101
w_for_wumbo wrote: post #3

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us…

I think the compensation comes in the form of lower prices, greater availability of the products, a higher standard of living and newly gained freedom for the worker. They can do something else now. The compensation maybe isn't as explicit or obvious as receiving an "automation dividend" check every month. That's what securities are for!

Is this a billboard for Capital in the whole Capital vs Labor debate?

“Laborers fret not, you’ve been liberated from your job actually, and I sure hope you bought securities!”

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#104

Post by verdverm »

tzs wrote: post #92
pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) We need a radically different one now - one that shifts the burden *off" labor and back on to asset owners - especially land owners (there is literally only an economic upside to taxing them more). 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. 3) if control over the economy were wrested from oligarchs and were put under democratic control, the economy wouldnt be geared towards frittering away billions on trying to de…

> 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. Not necessarily. If the manufacturing of robots can be made cheap enough it may be cheaper to replace broken robots with new ones and send the broken ones off to be recycled rather than fix them.

or robots fixing robots, and all our other things while they are at it

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#106

Post by nemo44x »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #99
JohnFen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Companies already send that clear message even without AI. That's why there's fear here: we expect companies to behave as they always have, and that is with a level of contempt for human workers.

What about as consumers then? Without workers who's going to buy anything? We have some serious logistics to figure out if we automate the majority of jobs away, and yet somehow all these companies are expecting people to still be able to buy their products.

There will be more companies making things and providing things than there are today because there’s more labor available. We can do the things that aren’t of higher necessity today.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#107

Post by TotalCrackpot »

ta8645 wrote: post #70
zlg_codes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For all its failings, capitalism has done more to improve the lives of every human on this planet more than any other system before. I'd like to see some real numbers for this. Capitalism creates inequality which even the feudal eras of various countries couldn't match. Serfs enjoyed more spare time in their day than the modern full-time worker. Granted, they had their own problems to deal with, but to pretend that…

> Without capitalism, I could have control over my life. Says who? You think people in China and Russia have more control over their life than those in the west? You've still not offered anything other than wishful thinking. You've not proposed any system to replace capitalism. Ultimately you're just offering destruction, with no vision for rebuilding other than, "I hope it gives me an easier life".

I propose libertarian socialism or Anarchism, either the left-wing market variant or the communist variant.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#108

Post by nemo44x »

Gigachad wrote: post #91
coolhand2120 wrote: post #14

People are happy to use tech like wix to build a web page because building web pages is hard. Virtually every designer, artist, writer, and musician, were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers. “Finally I can do what these nerds can do without their help”. I really don’t see the difference.

Reality is that it didn't cost any jobs. Everyone just moved up to making things more complex than what Wix can do. I don't feel my life is any worse off having moved from building static marketing pages to complex web apps.

Exactly this. As certain types of jobs go away it frees us to do new ones. When we had an agrarian society there weren’t many massage parlors around even though they probably could have used them.

Additionally as programming languages and toolkits have become higher level and more accessible there has been more demand for programmers.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#109

Post by ehnto »

nemo44x wrote: post #106
fiftyfifty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about as consumers then? Without workers who's going to buy anything? We have some serious logistics to figure out if we automate the majority of jobs away, and yet somehow all these companies are expecting people to still be able to buy their products.

There will be more companies making things and providing things than there are today because there’s more labor available. We can do the things that aren’t of higher necessity today.

To sell to who? If no one has income, who buys the things?

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#110

Post by fiftyfifty »

lolinder wrote: post #6

This version of the Luddites is the one I was taught in my history classes—in both HS and college my teachers were careful to emphasize that the colloquial usage and the actual movement are only loosely related, and we discussed how the Luddites weren't rejecting technology per se so much as they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life. This is certainly something worth learning from today, and a…

The real lesson we should be taking from the Luddites is while they did establish a precedent for fighting for worker's rights, they failed in any meaningful way to reverse the march of technology. In fact throughout history we have never managed to put the technology genie back in the bottle, probably going back to the first tools and weapons that were ever created. So we had better figure out real quick how we are going to live with AI, because there is no going back now.
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