[lukeschlather]

The Luddites were employed by textile manufacturers and destroyed machines to get better bargaining power in labor negotiations. They weren't indiscriminately targeting automation, they targeted machines that directly affected their work.

[Refreeze5224]

Which makes the comparison of modern anti-AI proponents (like myself) and Luddites even more apt and accurate.

[panarky]

Because life would be so much better if people still had to spin wool and weave cloth by hand, and grow their own food by digging in the earth with no tools.

Use whatever means necessary to stop powerful people from exploiting you and stealing the fruits of your labor. If that struggle involves monkeywrenching their machines, so be it.

But like any tool, the machines themselves can be used for good or evil. Breaking the machines shouldn't be an end in itself.

[dpc050505]

The 700m people suffering from starvation or malnutrition while we produce excess food would probably rather be digging in the earth with no tools if it meant they got fed.

The Luddites wouldn't have been destroying machines if they had insurance that they would also benefit from the machines, rather than see their livelihoods being destroyed while the boss made more money than ever.

[Refreeze5224]

Like the OP, you misunderstand the entire point of the Luddites. Breaking the machines was not an end, it was the tactical means to help illustrate their broader point of how the owning class can arbitrarily ruin their entire lives and livelihoods with absolutely zero recourse or consultation with the impacted people. This is a defining feature of capitalism, and that was their issue.

Your strawman about spinning and digging with no tools is just that, and is irrelevant to the core issue of capitalism.

[panarky]

If the core issue is ending exploitation by capitalists and not about breaking machines, if you don't want to return to a world without automation, if the machine is just a strawman, then why do you describe yourself as "anti-AI" instead of "anti-capitalist" or "anti-exploitation"?

It seems like you identify yourself with the strawman instead of with the core issue.

[Refreeze5224]

I am anti-capitalist and exploitation. And I don't think any anti-capitalist person can be pro-AI, not the way it's currently constructed. But people on a startup forum tend to lose their minds if you say you're against either :)

Being anti-AI is not a straw man, it's the logical conclusion of being against exploitation and hierarchical domination. Discussing that nuance here is difficult, to say the least, so it's simpler to say anti-AI.

[lukeschlather]

Unless you're committing serious crimes vandalizing machines to get leverage over a counterparty in a negotiation you're not comparable to the Luddites.

[Refreeze5224]

And you clearly don't understand the core issue the Luddites have if you think it was just about breaking stuff for leverage.

[nine_k]

Destroying someone else's property is much more obviously criminal than cutting off someone else's car, which is not nice, but not destructive.

[Retric]

Criminality is an arbitrary benchmark here, cutting people off can be illegal due to the risks involved.

However what’s more interesting is the deeper social contracts involved. Destroying other people’s stuff can be perfectly legal such as fireman breaking car windows when someone parks in front of a fire hydrant. Destroying automation doesn’t qualify for an exception, but it’s not hard to imagine a different culture choosing to favor the workers.

[nine_k]

Inflicting damage is usually justified by averting larger damage. Very roughly, breaking a $200 car window is justified in order to save a $100k house from burning down. Stealing someone's car is justified when you need a car to urgently drive someone bleeding to a hospital to save their life (and then you don't claim the car is yours, of course).

I don't think Luddites had an easy justification like this.

[ordersofmag]

I'm pretty sure the Luddites judged the threat the machines posed to their livelihood to be a greater damage than their employer's loss of their machines. So for them, it was an easy justification. The idea that dollar value encapsulates the only correct way to value things in the world is a pretty scary viewpoint (as your reference to the value of saving a life illustrates).

[SR2Z]

One one side there were the luddites and their livelihoods; tens of thousands of people.

On the other side, there were cheap textiles for EVERYONE - plus some profits for the manufacturers.

They might have been fighting to save their livelihoods, but their self-interest put them up against the entire world, not just their employers.

[Throaway1982]

The Luddites were trying to stop themselves & their families from starving to death. The factory owners were only interested in profit. It isn't like the Luddites were given a generous re-training package and they turned it down. They had 0 rights, I mean that literally: 0.

[Retric]

It’s an interesting question because the benefits of automation aren’t necessarily shared early on. If you can profitably sell a shirt for 10$ while everyone else needs to sell for 20$ there’s no reason to actually charge 10$ you might as well charge 19.95$ and sell just as many shirts for way more money.

So if society is actually saving 5c/shirt while “losing” 9$ in labor per shirt. On net society could be worse off excluding the one person who owns the factory and is way better off. Obviously eventually enough automation happens so the price actually falls meaningfully, but that transition isn’t instantaneous where decisions are made in the moment.

Further we currently subsidize farmers to a rather insane degree independent of any overall optimization for social benefit. Thus we can’t even really say optimization is the deciding factor here. Instead something else is going on, the story could have easily been framed as the factory owners doing something wrong by automating but progress is seen as a greater good than stability. And IMO that’s what actually decides the issue for most people.

[cwillu]

Dangerous driving is a criminal offense