Should probably paste the second paragraph here for everyone who doesn’t wanna read TFA. Most people’s understanding of the Luddites seems about on par with their knowledge of the “idiot McDonalds coffee lady”<p>> The Luddites, Brian shows, weren’t anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers’ livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. Their dispute is best understood not as being over “technology” but about who gets the benefit of new technologies and who decides what kinds of technologies will be implemented
The article waffles on without providing any real insight or solutions.<p>The key solution is technology that empowers men.<p>- Self-driving cars should be an option for drivers to flick on and off at will.<p>- Mechanized looms should be custom built to enhance the craft.<p>- Computers should submit to their user's will and design.<p>None of that is guarenteed to continue.<p>Corporatized technology devours resources, and subverts human authority - with dark patterns and authoritarian policy.<p>Automation homogenizes the input and output, making products the same.<p>When every resource is under computer control, there won't be any need to have a capitalist own the profits. There won't be a need for employees to buy the output.<p>The concept of new startups will be flattened out by centralized resource control.<p>The technological revolution eats it's own future.<p>Why bother being a luddite?<p>The prognosis for technology is already terminal. Let's accelerate the decline.
If automation is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, then Luddism is the exploitation of consumers by workers. I don't want to be legally forced to pay double the price for clothing just because some well-connected weavers enacted regulation to ban more efficient competition.