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
@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.
@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.
@volkris @Wolven If your whole argument amounts to, "Nuh uh," then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other.