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Why You Should Be a Luddite

currentaffairs.org

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Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#21

Post by barrysteve »

The article waffles on without providing any real insight or solutions.

The key solution is technology that empowers men.

- Self-driving cars should be an option for drivers to flick on and off at will.

- Mechanized looms should be custom built to enhance the craft.

- Computers should submit to their user's will and design.

None of that is guarenteed to continue.

Corporatized technology devours resources, and subverts human authority - with dark patterns and authoritarian policy.

Automation homogenizes the input and output, making products the same.

When every resource is under computer control, there won't be any need to have a capitalist own the profits. There won't be a need for employees to buy the output.

The concept of new startups will be flattened out by centralized resource control.

The technological revolution eats it's own future.

Why bother being a luddite?

The prognosis for technology is already terminal. Let's accelerate the decline.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#22

Post by bloody-crow »

xref wrote: post #10

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their…

> The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers.

I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor. If you're pro technology only until it makes you, the human, redundant, you're anti-technology.

It's a weak attempt to reframe people upset about losing job market relevancy as some noble human rights advocates.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#23

Post by hnfong »

bloody-crow wrote: post #22
xref wrote: post #10

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their…

> The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor.…

I'd be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't anti-technology per your definition.

Are you sure you're not an AI advocating for a world ruled by AI capitalists where us primitive humans have no role whatsoever? :P

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#24

Post by rainonmoon »

bloppe wrote: post #4

If automation is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, then Luddism is the exploitation of consumers by workers. I don't want to be legally forced to pay double the price for clothing just because some well-connected weavers enacted regulation to ban more efficient competition.

Your circumstances may require changing to produce more compassionate circumstances for other human beings. For example, buying your twice as expensive clothing half as often. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#25

Post by rainonmoon »

bloppe wrote: post #16
ambientenv wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's all about, and only about, you. Yes?

Despite sounding like it's zero-sum, fighting for the consumer is actually the only way to lift everybody up. Fighting for workers specifically is playing favorites. Fighting for the ownership class is also playing favorites. Focusing on consumers makes everybody a winner over time.

Workers are consumers. A healthier working class and a more even distribution of wealth provides increased purchasing power. If all you can see is what you'd lose and not imagine what you'd gain, that's a fault of imagination, not the proposal.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#26

Post by bloppe »

rainonmoon wrote: post #25
bloppe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite sounding like it's zero-sum, fighting for the consumer is actually the only way to lift everybody up. Fighting for workers specifically is playing favorites. Fighting for the ownership class is also playing favorites. Focusing on consumers makes everybody a winner over time.

Workers are consumers. A healthier working class and a more even distribution of wealth provides increased purchasing power. If all you can see is what you'd lose and not imagine what you'd gain, that's a fault of imagination, not the proposal.

I feel like you're arguing against me, but I could also take your comment verbatim and feel like it backs up my side. Favoring consumers means everybody gets their fair share.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#27

Post by bloppe »

rainonmoon wrote: post #24
bloppe wrote: post #4

If automation is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, then Luddism is the exploitation of consumers by workers. I don't want to be legally forced to pay double the price for clothing just because some well-connected weavers enacted regulation to ban more efficient competition.

Your circumstances may require changing to produce more compassionate circumstances for other human beings. For example, buying your twice as expensive clothing half as often. Apologies for the inconvenience.

If weavers are allowed to charge whatever they want for clothes, farmers must be allowed to charge whatever they want for food (no tractors allowed), etc. We would still have switch-board operators, and everything would be more expensive for everyone and half the people would be stuck doing busy work they don't actually need to do because their job could be automated.

It's not about convenience vs compassion. Luddism is not convenient nor compassionate for anybody

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#29

Post by foul »

bloody-crow wrote: post #22
xref wrote: post #10

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their…

> The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor.…

>I find this argument stupid and disingenuous. Technology exists to reduce or eliminate labor. If you're pro technology only until it makes you, the human, redundant, you're anti-technology.

This smells like the "Yet you participate in society, curious!" comic. Is this just for upvotes' sake? "Job market relevancy" during George IV meant returning to the coal mines at best.

Re: Why You Should Be a Luddite

#30

Post by GlobalFrog »

paxys wrote: post #14
xref wrote: post #10

Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady” > The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their…

It's a bullshit argument either way. Say it's 1800 and you need 100 workers to make a new suit, which costs as much as one's annual rent (yes, really). Suddenly machines show up and can make the same suit with 10 workers and at 1/10 the cost. The other 90 workers are outraged, break machines and cry about "enriching capitalists at the expense of laborers". What is the solution exactly? Should the average household co…

That is a misrepresentation of the argument. The point is not that 90 workers are outraged, the point is that the business owner will spend 90% less and keep the difference for him, accumlating wealth. The "wealth pie" is now more concentrated in only a few hands, and in the next technological evolution, the same process occurs, which leads to an always increasing concentration of the wealth available with less and less people. The Luddites did not say to keep the 90 people subsidized (that again is a rhetorical misrepresentation and very dismissive of the work force). They said that the wealth available had to be distributed more evenly between the people who created this wealth and who are impacted by the change. As the capitalists of the time refused, they smashed the machines and the other side said they were against progress. The fact is that we do not put the same meaning in the word progress: if a society becomes more and more a society of masters and servants with less and less possibilities for the lower class to better their condition, is that progress? There is a convergence at play here : real life communism and extreme capitalism are the same thing, the monopolization of wealth by a small class of people by every mean possible and then, making this admissible through communication to the masses.
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