[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.

[theamk]

You missed MR2Z's argument: there are more people in the world than luddites and factory owners.

During industrial revolution, the clothes (and other fabrics) were getting dramatically cheaper. A family that could only afford cheapest clothes could now get a higher quality stuff. A family that could not afford any clothes at all, could now get cheap stuff.

This is what the luddites wanted to stop. It's not "luddites starving to death" vs "factory owner get no profit", it was "luddites starving to death" vs "many many more people can not afford clothes"

[Throaway1982]

Except for the fact that the Luddites' labour grievances could easily have been addressed by the factory owners (rise in pay, better conditions) while still offering cheaper fabrics through industrialization. There was simply no desire to do so. No one was saved from freezing to death by cheaper textiles.

People did starve to death and turn to things such as alcohol due to labour displacement during Industrialization. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that lower-class people were naturally inferior. Robert Owen challenged this theory.

And yes, that was the choice given to the Luddites. Have no work (and therefore no food), because the factory owner can replace you with machines, and you have no labour rights, so he will simply cast you out and make more profit. I did not miss Mr2Z's argument, yours is just incorrect.

[SR2Z]

> No one was saved from freezing to death by cheaper textiles.

Citation needed for that one.

> Except for the fact that the Luddites' labour grievances could easily have been addressed by the factory owners (rise in pay, better conditions) while still offering cheaper fabrics through industrialization.

So how long would the employers be required to pay them, in your mind? A year? Ten? A lifetime?

It would be the end consumer of the textile that would have to pay for those former textile workers to do nothing.

People can find new jobs when the world changes. It's not pleasant, but it's frankly a lot better than trying to force their old employer to keep them on payroll in a job where they can't do work.

[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.

[dotancohen]

In regards to both the Luddites and the farmers, you seem to forget the most important factor. Food.

In the case of the Luddites, it was a literal case of their children being threatened with starvation. "Livelihood" at the time was not fungible. The people affected could not just go apply at another industry. And there were no social services to help them eat during the transition period.

As for the farmers, any governing body realises that food security is national security. If too many people eschew farming for more lucrative fields, then the nation is at risk. Farming needs to appear as lucrative as medicine, law, and IT to encourage people to enter the field.

[Retric]

The luddites food requirements didn’t provide them with popular support.

Similarly US agricultural output could be cut in half without serious negative consequences. Far more corn ends up as ethanol than our food and we export vast quantities of highly subsidized food to zero benefit. Hell ethanol production costs as much in fossil fuels as we get ethanol from it, it’s literally pure wasted effort.

Rational policy would create a large scale food shortage and then let market forces take over. We could have 10 years of food on hand for every American at way less expensive than current policy with the added benefit of vastly reducing the negative externalities of farming such as depleting aquifers.

[fc417fc802]

Be careful with the assumptions you're making. A risk management strategy, for example, will often appear to be of zero benefit except in the case where shit hits the fan. We can stop feeding cattle, producing ethanol, and whatever else overnight in the event that something happens.

> Rational policy would create a large scale food shortage and then let market forces take over.

Well I'm just going to state that I'm _really_ happy that you're not the one in charge and leave it at that.

[theamk]

I am not sure at all how would we stockpile 10 years of food for each American - most of the kinds of food cannot be kept for that long. And what can be kept is unlikely to make a balanced diet.

Moreover, I am not sure how long will it take to re-build the farm industry if most farms will close. I think "10 years" is too optimistic, given how many farms will need to be spun up.

[AngryData]

You could revert to a granary system, but the whole point of farming subaidization was to leave the granary system that repeatedly throughout history ended up with massive famine and starvations.

Stored food is not bullet proof, and takes up a lot more bulk space than you may think. It can also take numerous years to ramp up farming production in response to a drop in yields or disaster.

[hollerith]

>The people affected could not just go apply at another industry.

Can you explain why? I don't understand.