Simple Living

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Live better, with less

Ideas and inspiration for living more simply. A place to share tips on living with less stuff, work, speed, or stress in return for gaining more freedom, time, self-reliance, and joy.

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How to smash the looms today | I've always loved tech. Now, I'm a Luddite. You should be one, too. (www.stltoday.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Luddites have been horribly misrepresented throughout history. They were a prosperous middle class who had their livelihoods extinguished by rich assholes running sweatshops.

As Amazon grew, stories emerged about grueling conditions in its warehouses. Google used its monopoly power to strangle competitors' products. A suicide epidemic swept an iPhone factory. Predictions mounted that AI would soon replace tens of millions of human jobs — that the rise of the robots was at hand. The Luddites would have had a problem with all of that.

That's what I realized one long Labor Day weekend in 2014, when I stumbled on an academic work that examined the Luddites and their struggle against the tech titans of their day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

This is what the author said further down. Your comment is confusing me in the way you meant it.