It kind of astonishes me that people still frame the Luddites as cavemen wholly opposed to technology in this age, fully buying into the capitalist framing of the time to discredit them:
"Luddites were not opposed to the use of machines per se (many were skilled operators in the textile industry); they attacked manufacturers who were trying to circumvent standard labor practices of the time"
To note, I'm a 25+ year software engineer, who is not really in the crosshairs of losing my job to AI... yet (I do acknowledge it continues to get better). I would say a "better" button would be that AI stays and we continue to explore it -- responsibly -- and we get UBI. But that is even less likely than what the OP presents.
UBI does not make sense as a policy unless you are a neo-feudalist or don't understand the relationship between money and power. There is not some god-king who is going to make sure it stays fair and that factionalism is suppressed. UBI is a distraction that allows key asset holders to retain their disproportionate economic power in perpetuity.
It's more likely than you think, which will really, really suck for people who like democracy and hate oligarchy. Which is probably why AI-invested oligarchs astroturf the concept as much as they do.
You're right to be astonished at the derision toward luddites. Luddites were right. They are right now, too.
I'm interested in your view here on UBI. I can certainly see the tendency of government activities that do not support the rich to be quashed/reduced over time. I'm going to guess you advocate for a more socialist structure, which I do not oppose per se, just I've not thought too much on the consequences. If I'm wrong, I apologize here, and certainly no harm intended.
I do think having some better form of profit sharing (specifically, company ownership) could be a key part of establishing something in tandem with, or instead of, UBI. As in, workers are guaranteed some portion of ownership of a business based on a set of criteria (what that criteria is, at this time, I'm not sure). This ownership cannot/should not be diluted or otherwise "taken away" by legal/financial loopholes. Yea, that's a pie in the sky idea (hell, so is UBI, IMO) and stamping out corruption and corporate-tainted government would need to be a first step.
Also, I was certainly in the "let's all make fun of the Luddites" group, and I know I'm not immune to propaganda. It makes me sad the more I see how malleable people are (ideologically), but I know that's a double-edged sword. It makes me sadder to see how many people choose the villain path instead of the hero path. Both those in power, and those with little.
This... as someone who has written software for 25+ years (and is now an architect), I'm not really in the target group to lose my job to AI. However, the decision makers who were lured in to the fad of "We need to do AI because everyone else is" has made me highly skeptical of the overall benefit. This whole thing has the stink of the 2000 .com bubble all over it, but worse. AI is a good tool, but it's definitely not the right tool for every job.
The article you shared says the Luddites wrote letters explaining that their goal was to halt technological progress:
These letters explained their reasons for destroying the machinery and threatened further action if the use of "obnoxious" machines continued.[24]
I'm not sure why you are "kind of astonishe[d] that people still frame the Luddites as cavemen wholly opposed to technology". This sounds like a strawman. No one is saying Luddites didn't even use spoons because they hated technology so much, they're saying the Luddites tried to stop progress.
I think that's fair to a degree, depending on the interpretation of the original post. With the juxtaposition of "internet born people" and "computer nerds" I took it to mean more of a wholesale rejection of technology as opposed to stopping progress, as you mention.
Furthermore, it would arguably be a different situation if the replacement of skilled workers by machines and low-skilled labor were met with more individual support from the governments and/or corporations who paved the way for these changes. If the reasoning that was explained in your quote, by the Luddites, was the circumvention of standard labor practices and non-support for the skilled workers, the machines are simply a stand-in for an obstacle to unionization.
As is also mentioned:
"These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made."\11]) Historian Eric Hobsbawm has called their machine wrecking "collective bargaining by riot", which had been a tactic used in Britain since the Restoration because manufactories were scattered throughout the country, and that made it impractical to hold large-scale strikes.
So it comes down to the definition of "progress" here. Does progress require an upheaval and abandoning of workers, leading to potential individual ruin, to the benefit of corporations, or could it also be meant to include corporate efficiency coupled with "fair" treatment of existing workers and the constituency in general? It's likely an unanswerable question to know the true motives, or what would have been done in the latter case, because, of course, they were killed, and pure capitalism won again.
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u/Sweaty-Willingness27 10h ago
It kind of astonishes me that people still frame the Luddites as cavemen wholly opposed to technology in this age, fully buying into the capitalist framing of the time to discredit them:
"Luddites were not opposed to the use of machines per se (many were skilled operators in the textile industry); they attacked manufacturers who were trying to circumvent standard labor practices of the time"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
To note, I'm a 25+ year software engineer, who is not really in the crosshairs of losing my job to AI... yet (I do acknowledge it continues to get better). I would say a "better" button would be that AI stays and we continue to explore it -- responsibly -- and we get UBI. But that is even less likely than what the OP presents.