I Don't Hate the Rich, But I Know Who My Enemy Is

[NashVegas]

My enemy is anyone who would hire an engineer to automate tasks that currently depend on skilled people with good judgment.

[dmallind]

1. So only artisan jobs are worthwhile?

What about the engineer's job to automate? The financial analysts job to do the CBA of that automation? The people - who have no doubt skills and judgment - whose job it is to build and maintain that automation and all the support staff at their plant? Isn't that important?

[RC]

2. So you are a luddite?

Lud·dite ( l¾d“ºt) n. 1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment. 2. One who opposes technical or technological change. Lud “dism n.

[NashVegas]

4. I'm Here, Aren't I?

One doesn't have to be a Luddite to appreciate what they did - risk death trying to prevent what they perceived as an oncoming tragedy.

The machinery wasn't labor-saving as much as "labor payroll saving."

The Luddites were not, as not only popularizers of theories of technology but also capitalist apologists for unregulated innovation claim, universally technophobes. The Luddites were artisans -- primarily skilled workers in the textile industries in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Cheshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Flintshire in the years between March 1811 and April 1817 -- who when faced with the use of machines (operated by less-skilled labor, typically apprentices, unapprenticed workers, and women) to drive down their wages and to produce inferior goods (thereby damaging their trades' reputations), turned to wrecking the offensive machines and terrorizing the offending owners in order to preserve their wages, their jobs, and their trades. Machines were not the only, or even the major, threat to the textile workers of the Midlands and North. The Prince Regent's Orders in Council, barring trade with Napoleonic France and nations friendly to France, cut off foreign markets for the British textile industry. Even more importantly, famine and high food prices required more of each laborer's shrinking wages. Machines and the use of machines to drive down wages were simply the most accessible targets for expressions of anger and direct action.

The Luddites were not the first or only machine wreckers. Because organized, large-scale strikes were impractical due to the scattering of manufactories throughout different regions, machine wrecking, which E. J. Hobsbawm calls "collective bargaining by riot," had occurred in Britain since the Restoration. For example, in 1675 Spitalfields narrow weavers destroyed "engines," power machines that could each do the work of several people, and in 1710 a London hosier employing too many apprentices in violation of the Framework Knitters Charter had his machines broken by angry stockingers. Even parliamentary action in 1727, making the destruction of machines a capital felony, did little to stop the activity. In 1768 London sawyers attacked a mechanized sawmill. Following the failure in 1778 of the stockingers' petitions to Parliament to enact a law regulating "the Art and Mystery of Framework Knitting," Nottingham workers rioted, flinging machines into the streets. In 1792 Manchester weavers destroyed two dozen Cartwright steam looms owned by George Grimshaw. Sporadic attacks on machines (wide knitting frames, gig mills, shearing frames, and steam-powered looms and spinning jennies) continued, especially from 1799 to 1802 and through the period of economic distress after 1808.

http://campus.murraystate.edu/academic/faculty/kevin.binfield/luddites/LudditeHistory.htm

What the above essay doesn't touch on was the use of Enclosure to drive formerly self-sustaining populations into the factories in the first place.

[pnwmom]

8. Anyone who uses a computer or the internet is relying on the work of engineers.

Computers have replaced the work of millions of employees.

[Deja Q]

13. Can we credit them for the birth of the chiropractic and carpal tunnel industries too?

:hide:

[pnwmom]

15. Sure, why not. Well, maybe not the chiropractic -- that's been around

for a much longer time.

[acmavm]

12. Oh for (insert name or deity here) sake. Even the ancient Romans knew

some self-enforced obsolescense was necessary in order to prevent the collapse of their society. Just because we CAN do something does not mean we should. So sometimes, contrary to a lot of 'modern' thought, automation is NOT a good thing.

[NashVegas]

27. It's Interesting

To see how defensive people are about this. No one thinks, "it can happen to me," or maybe they do and insist on being powerless to stop it.

[WillowTree]

29. It did happen to me.

So used it to my advantage and learned the technology, which made me valuable because not only do I know how to use the technology, but when I push the button, I not only know what it's going to do, I know how it's doing it. Gives me a leg up on those who only know what to do, not why they're doing it.

It's about being willing to grow. You might want to try it sometime.

[Zywiec]

3. Yeah, I wish we still had switchboard operators routing all phone calls

My enemy is the engineer that created the phone switch automating all these tasks and putting operators out of work...

:eyes:

[NashVegas]

5. I Bet You Do When You Try Calling Customer Service

:)

[MadHound]

6. And you write this on a computer

Which is then automatically sent out to other computers.

The irony is delish, complaining about automation using the ultimate automation device.

[NashVegas]

7. Show Me How People Were Using the Internet Before Computers?

Pretty please.

[pnwmom]

9. Don't you realize that computers themselves have replaced the work of

millions of workers. The invention of the computer, then the personal computer, led to the ending of millions of jobs -- and new ones (such as internet related jobs) sprung up afterwards.

Should we go back to the pre-computer days, when research had to be conducted at your local library? Should we go back to the days before we had telephones? Both computers and telephones were invented as labor saving devices.

[NashVegas]

11. And Dumbed Down & De-Socialized the Populace in the Process

I could go back to pre-computing days quite easily, and be happy as a peach to be in the library, surrounded by the smell of books and dealing face-to-face with librarians.

Gods. Remember what it was like to have in-depth conversations about ideas without some fallacy-pushing idiot shouting, "LINK?"

[pnwmom]

14. If that's true, then you should start right now. Get rid of your computer,

go back into your library, and stay off the Internet. What's keeping you?

By the way, I do have in-depth conversations about ideas in person. In fact, I've had two such evenings with friends in the last two nights. The Internet (looking up a restaurant) and my cell phone made arranging the meetings easier. The technology assisted us, it didn't get in the way.

[MadHound]

17. And yet here you are, being social with other people

As are millions and millions of others, each and every day.

Oh, and if it wasn't for the combination of the modern library and the computer, research for all sorts of subjects would take longer and be less effective. I'm currently able to access primary documents from the National Archives without having to actually travel to D.C.

Oh, and I go to my library and interact with the librarians face to face all the time, smell of old books and all.

And if you're so fed up with people looking for you to actually prove outrageous statements, why are you still around? Oh, yeah, that socialization thing.

The irony is still delish.

[NashVegas]

23. And Here You Are, Purposfully Being Insulting

Most people would call that pretty anti-social behavior.

[MadHound]

10. The internet is just a means of facilitating communication

People communicated, both long distance and short distance, all the time before there was an internet. Letters, telephone, telegraph, face to face. Groups used to get together an discuss the issues of the day, much like we're doing here, they were called salons. People used to play games with others who lived across the country, anybody remember post card chess? All this communication took place, the difference was that it wasn't automated, and thus, like most non-automated functions, it took longer. The internet, all it did was automate the communication process and shortened the time frame for communication.

[NashVegas]

16. Nonethess, It's Its Own Beast

A salon-type atmosphere on the internet can only pervade among groups where membership is restricted - just as it was offline.

In gaming circles on the internet, cheating prevails, whereas offline you stand a much better chance of spotting a cheater and blocking them from your gaming group.

It's funny how people quickly point to the "you're on the internet, aren't you? Well ...." and completely ignore the masses who are losing their jobs because of it.

Yes, I'm on the internet. That said, I've pretty much stopped shopping online as much as possible, to keep my dollars here. At work, there are people who I know who have jobs because I refuse to use automated services.

[MadHound]

18. Yet you are still patronizing the mother of all automation

The minute you turn on your computer or hook up to the internet. Just the fact that you write an email or hit a chatroom is denying a job to somebody. The post office is considering cutting back to a five day delivery week in large part due to the fact that everybody is writing their correspondence on emails:shrug:

You remind me of those old Luddites who used to berate automobiles, all the while driving their old Caddy down the road.

Sorry, but really now, don't you find it the least bit ironical that you're complaining about automation, and doing so on the mother of all automation devices.

[NashVegas]

21. It's Sunday

Post office is closed :)

And you should read more about the Luddites and Enclosure before you use the word as an insult.


It's funny how everyone throwing darts at the OP cites this one (admittedly glaring) example, while ignoring the role automation + specialized tasks + very bad judgment has brought us the current financial catastrophe.

[pnwmom]

22. It's not funny. It's because it's such a glaring example, as you say -- using the Internet

to criticize the development of technology.

And it's nonsense to blame the current economic crisis on the Internet or computers. The decisions that were made and the lack of regulation were all too human mistakes, supported by all too human greed.

The same factors that brought us to the Great Depression, decades before the first modern computer was invented.

[NashVegas]

24. So You Would Agree, Then?

That automation, specialized tasks, and bad judgment have played a role in the 2 million jobs lost this winter?

[pnwmom]

25. Bad judgment, yes. But without the human decisions not to regulate the banking

industry, and to give tax advantages to companies that ship jobs out of the country, we wouldn't be in this mess.

New technologies by themselves haven't been the problem. They create new jobs at the same time they eliminate others.

[NashVegas]

28. Yeah, Actually, We Would

The entire goal of automation in the workplace is to eliminate payroll and it has the added bonus in controlling innovation from the bottom of the ladder that threatens the elites.

Businesses are failing left and right because people in management have become more fabulously skilled at self-promotion and marketing than actually running a business.

Where we are now would have happened with or without the banking crisis; as labor jobs disappeared to automation, what replaced them, from an income-bearing standpoint - are computer/IT jobs - which are now being replaced by the free labor of crowd-sourcing.

[stray cat]

19. Cars built by hand would be very expensive and computers much less reliable and bulkier

[.... callchet ....]

20. Tax it. Let the robot do the work for you. Tax it and get a green job from the

government program the taxes will pay for.

[NashVegas]

26. Ha. I Like It!

But if we taxed automation, Harris would howl.