[nickelpro]

Replacing manual labor with automation is good, actually. Sewing machines put the weavers out of business yes, but more people get to wear shirts. I'm pro-shirts, anti-weavers.

Preventing such replacement is definitionally anti-progress

[testacpwoek]

>Preventing such replacement is definitionally anti-progress

You can have automation while also ensuring that people do not lose their livelihoods. It's not anti-progress to say that automation must not come at the expense of the lives of the people it is replacing. This wilful misrepresentation of Luddites was bad then, and it's bad now.

[nickelpro]

> It's not anti-progress to say that automation must not come at the expense of the lives of the people it is replacing.

Yes it is, we shouldn't deny 10000 people shirts or cars or fresh bread to save 100 jobs, but that's almost besides the point. This piece is arguing a far more straightforward and hilarious version of Luddism than you are.

The piece argues that military drones and homeless-harassing robotics are bad not because of their nature, but because they are taking human jobs. It advocates for "restriction of automation to only the most dangerous forms of work" (hope you like churning your own butter). It is such a ridiculous piece of work that it almost seems like a false flag, a piece intentionally made to portray "moderate" luddism like the degrowth people (already extremists) seem even more insane than they already are.

[testacpwoek]

>Yes it is, we shouldn't deny 10000 people shirts or cars or fresh bread to save 100 jobs

That's not what I said. I said that if we want automation, we must also have a system to keep the people it's replacing able to earn a living. That could be many things. Excess profit from automation could be paid to the people that it's replacing, and that's just the first thing that popped into my head.

> but that's almost besides the point.

The point was Luddites are not a caricature of an ideology, and their concerns and the issues they faced still exist today. We can have progress and still not mass-unemploy entire groups of people, but that comes at a cost to people in power, which is why we don't do it, and why labor movements historically have been met with violence by the state. HN is very quick to dismiss automation concerns because we're the ones building the automation, but there's no reason it won't come for us eventually, too. We're not the ones that own the factories, after all, we're just assembling them.

As for the rest, yeah it doesn't seem like the author has a good grasp on anything lol, it even says that Ned Ludd was their leader, and a real person. Way to lose credibility in a single panel. I just always have to point out that Luddites were a LABOR movement, primarily, and not an anti-progress or anti-technology movement. There is zero reason for workers to suffer as progress happens, other than greed.

[nickelpro]

You're arguing for a social safety net, that's in no way what luddism means or advocates for. This is why it is a parody.

Luddism doesn't argue for a social safety net, that people displaced by advances in automation and technology should be taken care of by the state. It argues that we shouldn't need a social safety net to take care of such laborers, because we should prevent automation from displacing them in the first place. This is exactly what the OP argues here.

Could the luddites have been satisfied by such an arrangement? Maybe, but that's not what they did. They threw clogs in the looms, and luddism as an ideology describes that mechanism and no other.

That particular nature is what makes luddism distinct from other labor movements. Luddism is not a synonym for "labor movement", it is a very specific set of prescriptions, and a laughable set of prescriptions at that.

[testacpwoek]

Oh I see where the disconnect is: It was always my understanding that Luddism isn't really an ideology, it's just a name for the specific Luddite workers movement that happened in the 19th century, that colloquially came to be a term for people against progress for any reason - despite the Luddites only being against the machinery that was specifically threatening their jobs, who also sought government reform for things like workers' rights and wages. I think what you're talking about is Neo-Luddism, I at least can't find anything that gives an explanation for any kind of specific general anti-technology Luddism philosophy or ideology that the people in the 19th century followed. If I'm wrong about this then I was mistaken, but I am definitely in agreement about the Neo-Luddites or any group that is completely against technological progress.

I certainly would much rather not have to work and just let automation take care of everything, while I pursue my own projects, but I also certainly don't want to be sent to the proverbial mines because humans become more expendable than robots.

[nickelpro]

There's no distinction, besides time period and the particular piece of automation at issue. Classical luddites hated looms putting textile workers out of work and modern luddites hate calculators putting accountants out of work.

The luddites of the early 19th century didn't argue for profit sharing or a protected monopoly over the textile industry. They didn't argue for job placement or pensions.

They said the "obnoxious" and "offensive" machines needed to be destroyed. They engaged in many other, more common labor practices, but those are not distinct. What makes luddism a distinctive practice, the ideology of the 19th century luddites that separated them from their contemporaries in other industries, is machine destruction.

If neo-luddism is in anyway separated from "classical" luddism in more than time period and devices at issue it's that the neo-luddites want to destroy new technology for more diverse reasons than merely job security.

No one calls themselves neo-luddites, but the groups the label is attached to often take issue with things like GMO foods not because a disease-free tomato put them out of work, but because they have a deep personal phobia of disease-free tomatoes. So there's some evolution there maybe but not in a way that I think is worth much meditation. They're still basically irrational, anti-progress, self-serving destructive forces. In other words, a boogeyman, a joke.