Luddites and Automation Debate

Just remember: that's how the Luddites felt about textiles machinery:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers lots of stories like this from the industrial revolution. The luddites resisted having their work taken over by machines. The machines produced worse quality, but were cheaper and lowered the skill level required to do the work. It also made output predictable, allowed people to be bunched into factories and enabled child labour and other kinds of exploitation.At the time people resisted having the

Just look up any history of the luddites. There are plenty of resources online. I don’t see why I should have to cite sources when I’m pointing out something utterly uncontroversial for anyone knowledgeable on the subject.Many of them were weaving workshop owners who lost their livelihood to automated factories. The transition to automation in the early 19th century was painful. That doesn’t mean I support what they did or think automation was wrong. In the grand scheme of things it was a nec

I think this is factually incorrect. Women used to spend the majority of their free time spinning thread and sewing clothes for their family. The average person owned three outfits total, and wore basically one outfit every single day.The industrial revolution dramatically increased both production and consumption. We now own different outfits for every day, dozens of special occasion fashions which must be regularly replaced and updated, etc. Total production, and total wages p

> It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments...The Luddite labor unrest arose from a very real decrease in living standards for many, many people which lasted for decades. Rural/semi-rural artisans lost out to factories staffed by smaller numbers of children who could be paid far less than adults. Many had no choice but to move to cities to fight for whatever jobs they could, and the squalid condi

Hey Ryan! Have you ever done any reading on the Luddites? They weren't the anti technology, anti progress social force people think they were.They were highly skilled laborers who knew how to operate complex looms. When auto looms came along, factory owners decided they didn't want highly trained, knowledgeable workers they wanted highly disposable workers. The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just wanted to realize some of the profit from the savings in labor alon

Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

Were we not making these same vapid arguments in the 1800s regarding automation and machines? The Luddites were an entire movement opposed to machines for exactly the same reasons, yet living standards are vastly higher than in those times — even the poor have air conditioners, TV and refrigerators. If we would have listened to the Luddites, we’d still be riding horses and using outhouses with a life expectancy of 45.

Weren’t we making the same arguments with weavers in the early 1800s and with the assembly line?Same story, different century.The auto made horse traders and blacksmiths redundant, automated weaving looms made weavers redundant, high yield farming made many small farmers redundant — yet worldwide poverty is lower than it has ever been, unemployment rates are fairly constant.New industries form when others decline. Who would have thought in 1920 that there would be an entire industry cen

Same thing happened to farmers during the industrial revolution, same thing happened to horse drawn carriage drivers, same thing happened to accountants when Excel came along, mathmaticins, and on and on the list goes. Just part of human peogress.