• stoly@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    People always assume that it is an anti-technology movement when it’s really an income-protection movement.

    • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      It’s more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren’t against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

      It’s currently looking like we’re headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      3 days ago

      I mean, today a lot of people are anti-genAi just because they had enough of it making everything worse (including technology), while also being an environmental disaster, and yet there are always assholes to accuse them of being “anti-technology”.

        • terabyterex@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          “I’m anti-capitalism” well the white house may grant your wish. they want to own the ai companies. you may get to live in your world where the government owns it all.

          i rather have private ownership.

          • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            What you’re describing is the theorised end state of capitalism. See crony-capitalism, state-capitalism, plutocracy, kakistrocracy, kleptocracy.

            You can still own private property in a world that outlaws billionaires, requires strong redistribution of wealth, and ensures every large enterprise is democratic, instead of plutocratic. Reality is not binary. But if you don’t accept that the existence of an ultra wealthy elite is an anti-democratic threat to the life and liberty of everyone — to the rule of law and social contract — you’re gonna end up in an authoritarian fascist or communist hellscape run by megalomaniacal psychopaths who don’t care about you, cut from the same cloth as each other. You can either support things that benefit the majority, or boot lick the criminally corrupt. If you choose to lick the boot, don’t be a petty little bitch and complain when the world comes crashing down around you.