Comment by ajross
2 days ago
> Didn’t a lot of those people end up in tenements in factory towns and down in the mines? It was a few generations before things really started to get better.
Obviously any individual can "end up in tenements or mines" and one can't disprove an assertion like that.
But broadly all social metrics were showing an inexorably upward trajectory in the Britain of the 19th century, cranking into a hockey stick toward the end of the century and into the 20th. It's just not true to argue that the Luddites were right as a matter of general policy.
> I’m not really up for disposing of people lives with a “to make an omelet you have to break some eggs” mentality.
To be only a tiny bit glib: that's a statement of thermodynamics, not social policy. Eggs break, period. Change is change. You can make specific arguments about things like backstopping sudden unemployment, but folding it into a discussion about Ludditism (or rather the Butlerian Jihad, I guess) isn't the right way to do that.
You’re talking about people with kids, wives, friends, hopes and dreams when you’re saying “Eggs break, period”. By reinforcing that view, you are helping to build the kind of society that just won’t care when you happen to be one of the eggs yourself.
People find it easy to be Utilitarians when they’re in the greatest number, don’t they?
Sigh. I'm just going to repeat verbatim the thing I said immediately after the bit you cherry picked to get upset about:
You can make specific arguments about things like backstopping sudden unemployment, but folding it into a discussion about Ludditism (or rather the Butlerian Jihad, I guess) isn't the right way to do that.
Sigh. It’s so tiring to argue with someone who argues about the technicalities of argument rather than actually talking about the thing they are talking about.
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