The luddites were OG rent-seekers, skilled workers who sought to keep their products costly through the time-honored political tradition of smashing other people's stuff Keep that in mind when someone lionizes luddites and rails against cheap + widespread data/informationhttps://twitter.com/rivatez/status/1174686638431227904 …
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Forgive me, but this is an unusually reductive tweet from you. I’m an arch capitalist free marketeer, but I’m also from the part of world in which the Luddites operated. Rent seeking is slightly different from a desire to preserve your livelihood at a time of seismic change.
You're from the part of the world where the luddites failed, cloth became a widely-available commodity and the mechanical loom inspired Babbage and Lovelace to pioneer computation Go ahead and lemme know how much hand-wringing you think I need to do to avoid being "reductive"
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Indeed, and great wealth was created in the process, vast cities emerged from small impoverished towns etc. I would not have it any other way. Yet, the luddites were not seeking increase, merely a misguided attempt to preserve a way of life.
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They weren't misguided. They'd spent time honing a skill and they felt entitled to make a good living doing it. If you built a machine that could do what they could do, they wanted it gone. Understandable. Selfish, but understandable. Glad they failed, unapologetically.
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They deserve neither lionisation or demonisation. I don’t think there’s a need for handwringing either.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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