[cptroot]

I think you'll find the luddites to be a more informative historical analogy. A new tool arrives in an industry staffed by craftsmen, providing capital a lever to raise profits at the expense of quality. Is it surprising that worker co-ops would choose not to pull that lever?

[Gud]

Why do you believe the quality will go down?

[cmrdporcupine]

The mistake here with both the Luddites and this is to mistake the tool for the actual problem (depending on where you sit), which is mechanization and automation and ultimately capitalism itself.

Opposing the machine does/did nothing.

Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, agitational political parties did (and can again).

[filleduchaos]

Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, and agitational political parties did nothing to prevent the severe decline of clothing quality that was the Luddites were advocating against. But of course, propaganda has very successfully reduced their entire platform to "worker's pay" alone, which is an even easier line to feed to people that over the decades have become accustomed to literal slop as apparel. And I mean that very literally - clothes that straight-up lose their structural integrity after a handful of laundry cycles.

Of course, there's definitely absolutely nothing about the state of the garment industry that's applicable to the current discussions about AI re: software quality and worker compensation. It's not as if this industry has not already seen its fair share of quality going to the dogs with only a small handful of people still knowing and caring enough to call it out while most others cheer for the Productivity™.