Post

i think a core beef that i have with a lot of this "automation is bad" sentiment lately is that there is no inherent moral good in laboring the story of humanity is one of invention, where we improve our conditions by building things that help us do more things more easily

sort of along my recent repost, the issue at hand has been the same since the dawn of capitalism: when automation increases productivity, who gets to capture the value of that productivity increase? the beef is not with the productivity. it's with the value capture

gonna just fully lean into being a stereotypical leftist here: yinz claim to have read marx yet clearly haven't read marx or internalized the ideas within bsky.app/profile/segy...

a thing i've been thinking about posting for a long time is "back in those days, the workers didn't say "eww factories were created by capitalists to enrich capitalists, we should abandon factories" they said "we should seize them and direct their output for the good of humanity"

and i'm not the first to say this, but it is a grave mistake that folks want to cede an important technology to the right we fight for technology so that we can direct it towards good ends. we don't just let the other side take good tools because we don't like how they use those tools

something related i typed last night on this topic.

i think part of this is the (intentional, capitalists write the history books) characterization of luddites and related movements as being anti-technology rather than pro-labor. i think a lot of people agree with the luddites' aims and methods and confuse the symptom for the cause

that is, my fear of rehabilitating the luddites is not because their aims were wrong but because their methods were wrong