[mamami]

This perspective very much ignores economic friction. The luddites were a thing because, metaphorically, not every washer can become a programmer. These large scale analyses often treat one person losing their job and a different person finding a job as equivalent, which does not reflect any kind of material reality

[anon7725]

The Luddite analogy is apt, however its sense is opposite to the way that it’s usually presented.

The Luddites were skilled artisans in the textile industry. They often worked from home, owning spinning and weaving equipment and acting as what we’d call independent contractors today.

The mechanization of the textile industry resulted in work that required less skill and had to be performed in a dangerous factory for suppressed wages that were determined by a cartel of factory owners rather than a robust market of small makers.

Sitting here 200 years on from the Industrial Revolution it seems to be an obvious good. But it sure did not sound like an appealing thing to live through if you weren’t one of the few owners of the means of production.

[sethammons]

The pollution and waste of textiles brings into question the obvious good. Yes, we have $5 shirts. But also yes, we "donate" old clothes and those donations end up clotting the beaches of impoverished nations.

Scrub through this report from ABC so your stomach can do backflips on how bad externalities are not tracked in modern prices:

https://youtu.be/bB3kuuBPVys?si=Lgb4z-nvrXqYkLQt

[grafmax]

Yeah actually the labor conditions of the working class were horrible as they entered factories, conditions only remedied by the spurs of the labor movement.

[mieses]

if you took away the factories, the outcomes for the working class were probably worse. it's easy to form polemics against new things that could have done better.

[sskates]

Being a farmer was worse!