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 in this case it is.
Sometimes society is improved by its resources going toward better uses. We should not be spending society's resources maintaining production of buggy whips, for example, when we no longer have such need for horse drawn buggies.
So it is here. Society found better ways to direct resources, ways that benefit more people better, spreading more wealth throughout society, even as this relatively small group of laborers wanted to protect their jobs against advancement.
We should focus on building up, finding them better ways to use their labor, rather than tearing down, costing everyone the opportunities to benefit from advancement.
Sure: people continue to find value in Bitcoin, which is why they trade for it.
Can't really say there much of a market for buggywhips, though.
@Wolven @volkris
We have no more need for bitcoin than we do for buggies and their accoutrements. You did not make an argument about value; you made an argument about redirecting resources to meet public needs—one might say an argument about *efficiency*—that you decline to apply to bitcoin for some reason.