Comment section isn’t nuanced enough to have this conversation and I am on a phone, but that is the way that the industry slandered the luddites as the parent claims.
The truth was that the machines produced worse quality goods and were less safe, not that people couldn’t skill up to use them and not that there wasn’t enough demand to keep everyone employed. It was quality and safety.
You should look into the issue further, because I had your opinion too until I soberly looked at what the luddites really were arguing for, it wasn’t the end of looms, it was quality standards and fair advertising to consumers.
Every party in the dispute was acting out of economic self-interest: the manufacturers wanted cheaper labour and higher margins, Parliament wanted industrial growth.
Only the workers are getting framed as though self-interest invalidates their position. The Luddites’ arguments about quality standards and consumer fraud were correct on the merits regardless of their motivation for raising them.
“More affordable clothes” that fall apart in a month aren’t more affordable.
And the choice was never mechanisation versus no mechanisation… it was whether the transition would include basic labour and quality standards. With regulation, you’d still have got mechanisation and cheaper clothing in the end… just without the fraudulent goods and wage suppression. Framing it as “society versus a few jobs” is exactly the manufacturer’s argument from the 1810s, which is very effective propaganda reaching through centuries.
Trying to keep all of labor's sweat as capitalist's own cash is bad actually.
Making clothing more efficient by employing children in dangerous factories is bad actually (what happened in the original factories and now at fast fashion).
The truth was that the machines produced worse quality goods and were less safe, not that people couldn’t skill up to use them and not that there wasn’t enough demand to keep everyone employed. It was quality and safety.
You should look into the issue further, because I had your opinion too until I soberly looked at what the luddites really were arguing for, it wasn’t the end of looms, it was quality standards and fair advertising to consumers.