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by Barrin92 1143 days ago
>They get to restart at the junior level, with commensurate pay, while they retain their age

the alternative to this is gerontocracy and stagnation. We actually have a real world example of this, Japan. Seniority as a leading principle and the inability to fire in the name of social stability sounds great on a 10 year time horizon and appears empathetic, on a 50 year time horizon you are going to be poor compared to an economy that accepts (but ideally cushions) the fallout that comes with economic churn. In 1990 Japan's economy was 50% as large as the American economy. Today it's 19%.

Even if the luddite motivations are more reasonable than the popular image suggests, we are much better off not being stuck in an artisanal mode of production.

1 comments

> Even if the luddite motivations are more reasonable than the popular image suggests, we are much better off not being stuck in an artisanal mode of production.

We really should aim for both. That the society as a whole is better off when it receives the benefits of creative destruction, it also has a moral obligation to make sure the "destruction" part is only shifting labor and expertise allocation - destroying ephemeral constructs like companies and brands, not actual lives.

It is a moral issue first and foremost, but we can't be burying our heads in the sand here and pretending we didn't know - the issue carries with it a real threat of those whose lives get destroyed rising up to tear down the civilization that crushed it. It's in everyone's self-interest to be on the side of the Luddites.