The term "Luddite" has become synonymous with "technophobe" but that's not what the Luddites were about. They were a labour movement that fought to give workers control over the technology that was advancing without oversight and rapidly automating them out of their jobs.
"Luddite" as a pejorative was a technocrat PR coup.
@Wolven they were a labor movement that fought against technology that was set to improve society for all because they were busy clinging to the old ways out of a sense of self-entitlement.
It wasn't a technocrat PR coup. It was society as a whole telling them to knock it off for the sake of the general welfare.
@volkris yeah nah. "Improving society" by putting people out of work while still demanding they pay in to capital isn't really an improvement
@Wolven @volkris The irony of the whole debate is, it isn't an either-or proposition. If the money made from the machines went to the people they replaced, instead of to some 3rd party investor who did nothing but have money already, then improving society could happen without impoverishing a group of people. If industrialism had manifested as worker cooperatives instead of capitalist enterprises, this would have been the natural outcome. But some rich dudes figured out how to stick their fingers in the pie and call dibs, and here we are, still dealing with the same ridiculous issues.
@hosford42 "nothing but have money already" is no trifle.
Those people sacrificed for the greater good, turning down other opportunities to benefit with that money, putting it toward society-improving projects instead.
To be clear, I'm not saying it was charity or that they were good people or anything like that, but for them to forego their own immediate benefit for the sake of a project for the greater good is itself something we should be glad happened.
If industrialism had manifested as worker cooperatives instead of capitalist enterprises then society as a whole would have probably been worse off.
@Wolven
@hosford42 that is literally not what happened.
@hosford42 fortunately that's not my whole argument.
@volkris @hosford42 @Wolven At least in one sense you're right that that's not what happened. Workers weren't scammed out of control of the means of production, they were robbed of it at gunpoint and kept away from it at gunpoint on to the present day. Somehow though I don't think that's your point of disagreement.
Even setting aside the fact that investment is not drawn from pre-existing stocks amassed by the investor by deferring consumption—that’s not how investment works—the idea that *wealthy British elites in the late 18th and early 19th centuries* were sacrificing for the greater good is particularly fucking absurd.
Where did those fortunes come from, qoto.org?
Workers constantly advance each other product and labor in a network of credit.
Capitalists do not provide anything in that process; they simply monopolize control over that credit creation process.
Even if they didn’t, the British elites who owned the labor of the Luddites and their contemporaries did not build their fortunes by deferring consumption. They built them on the backs of slaves, enclosed and immiserated workers, and colonial expropriation.
Gates innovated the mob tactics of protecting his IP religiously? No, that's not how that works in reality.
In reality, the same governments who provided that free computer time also provided the IP structure and restrictions on usage of ideas.
That's not up to Gates but to our active support and reelection of the politicians who implement those policies.
We get the government we vote for as we keep reelecting the same types of folks with the same bad ideas.
@Wolven @hosford42
This thread inspired me to block qoto (and a few other instances) immediately. Alarming stuff: https://scholar.social/@researchfairy/109478203408550823 (I take it the "don't defederate from me club" is "United Federation Of Instances").
CC: @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net @hosford42@techhub.social
@abucci @anubis2814 @Wolven I have personally had repeated issues with folks on qoto.
@anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net
@abucci @anubis2814 @Wolven I have met one or two people there who seem decent and probably don't realize what they signed up for. Most do not fit that description.
This thread inspired me to block qoto (and a few other instances) immediately. Alarming stuff: https://scholar.social/@researchfairy/109478203408550823 (I take it the "don't defederate from me club" is "United Federation Of Instances").
CC: @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net @hosford42@techhub.social
Sacrifice?!
These people already have more resources than they could ever use, much less appreciate, in a thousand lifetimes-- but you think occasionally spending some of it in ways that would contribute to the stability and sustainability of humanity's future (thereby ALSO BENEFITING THEM by building a world that would be less the fuck ON FIRE) instead of just using it on MORE bookers, blow, and stock buybacks is some kind of gracious "sacrifice"??
I'm not sure whether to laugh or be sick.
@Wolven @volkris @violetmadder @hosford42
It’s cartoonish bootlicking. Propertied elites, wealthy on the backs of slaves and enclosure and colonialism, buy the labor of expropriated peasants and this is somehow supposed to be *selfless sacrifice for public benefit*?
@HeavenlyPossum selfless?
Whoever said selfless?
No, it's even better, it's an alignment of interests.
No need to rely on selflessness that might disappear from day to day.
but for them to forego their own immediate benefit for the sake of a project for the greater good is itself something we should be glad happened.
@hosford42@techhub.social @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net
@abucci what? I'm referring to them foregoing immediate benefit for the sake of a project for greater good.
That's the whole point.
@volkris @Wolven Sacrificed? For the greater good? Those are some interesting tinted glasses. Investment has never been about self-sacrifice or the greater good. It has always been about *opportunity* for investors to secure a source of income for themselves. That favorite word of capitalists, "profit". Just because they had the self-restraint to wait for their delayed gratification doesn't make it any less gratifying.
Imagine if instead of owning the company as a result of their investment, they had only owned interest on a loan -- a sane compensation -- forgoing permanent control over other people's livelihood and permanent rent collection on every transaction those people partake in, in the form of profit, ever after. That still wouldn't have counted as sacrifice. And it would have still enabled the industrial revolution to take place -- without maintaining the status quo of aristocracy hoarding wealth and power at the expense of commoners like us.