

Luddites: Rage Against the Machine - lquist
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article01161301.aspx

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gavinpc
> I have this day issued orders for your being shot through the body with a
> Leden Ball

God forbid one do the ugly business _manually_!

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jimktrains2
I actually just wrote a post about being a new-luddite, to an extent:
<http://jimkeener.com/posts/luddite>

~~~
ef4
You have some good examples there that I personally agree with.

But I think it's important to note that our economic value judgements are our
own, and the fact that many of these products continue to be successful means
that other people hold contrary subjective opinions about them.

A statement like:

> "LCD and LED displays everywhere is another use of technology where I feel
> that cost isn’t justified by the returns."

misses the point that the people bearing the cost clearly disagree, or they
would stop doing it.

To the extent that we just share our judgements and try to convince other
people to share them, it's all good. But real "luddites" go further and try to
force their subjective economic judgements onto other people.

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pretoriusB
> _200 years ago, the Luddites tried to stop technological progress. They
> didn’t succeed._

The luddites could not care less about technological progress, succeeding or
not.

What they tried to do is keep their jobs to be able to feed their families.
And, yes, they failed at that.

The message of the luddites is not to abolish technology: it's too think of
the human costs behind progress, not just the benefits for the factory owner
or "future generations".

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InclinedPlane
They tried to halt progress because they thought progress was taking their
jobs and making their lives worse.

And if we gave in to that sort of extremely short-sighted and regressive view
then we'd be no better off today than we were 200 years ago.

~~~
chr15p
For thousands of years the best way for a working class man to support his
family had been to learn a trade, and set up his own business and if you had
skill and worked hard you'd live a comfortable life.

And then within a generation or so this was pretty much swept away and the
average man went from being his own boss living by his own skill, to being an
employee working long hours (12-14hrs a day), for low wages (operating the
machines was unskilled work), in horrible conditions (no health and safety
laws), with the constant threat of unemployment if the factory owner decided
he wasn't making enough profit (leaving the very real threat of starvation for
you and your family).

So progress _was_ taking their jobs and making their lives worse, and while
from the 21st century point of view we can see it as inevitable economic
change, and the march of progress as predicted by economic theory (and hey on
the grand scale you're right), they were more interested in feeding their
children.

Or to put it another way "short-sighted" depends on your point of view...

