Raw LLM Responses

9:18 - Just a note on Luddites, for any who don't know. They did not "hate technology." They saw, correctly, that automating the textile mills was going to eliminate their work, in the early 1800s when employment opportunities weren't exactly plentiful - the Industrial Revolution was resulting in horrific poverty for the newly-urbanized masses. Spinning & weaving had been important occupations - cottage industries - for people; it was SKILLED LABOUR and they had some measure of autonomy over their lives unlike other peasants/commoners/regular people. Many households did some spinning or weaving, which at the "producing for household use scale" was predominantly done by women. However actual textile workers - those who were able to provide an income for their families spinning and weaving to sell surplus cloth to others - they kind-of worked for themselves, or in a small workshed they shared with a few other weavers, not in large factories. And they were predominantly men (ie, the automation of the textile industry was threatening the small measure of independence a group of peasant men had enjoyed, where nearly every one of their peers who had ever lived in all of history that had come before them had had much less freedom and well-being). Textile workers accurately understood that the new textile machinery would eliminate their skilled labour, forcing them into a greatly lowered quality of life (it's not like there were much work that offered regular people a life above poverty). "Put down all machinery hurtful to commonality" was one of the Luddite slogans. They began breaking machinery in the factories - the Luddite rebellion was primarily where we see the wealthy begin to define "destruction of property" as violence. The industrialists saw the Luddites as massively dangerous; they knew the Luddites' sense of an assault on their dignity and well-being & sense that they could do something about it, couldn't be allowed to infect other groups of workers. The industrialists called on the government to deal with the situation, an early instance of THE STATE becoming the enforcer on behalf of of BUSINESS OWNERS. It was eventually announced that capital punishment would be the consequence for anyone breaking textile mill machines. Imagine. Capital punishment for destruction of property (without any bodily harm needing to be done to any person, to warrant it). That escalation led to Luddites killing a factory owner who had boasted that he'd ride through Luddite blood. Of course, they didn't "win," the rebellion was put down with violence by the military and three Luddites were hanged. And we now use the word Luddite as a put-down. But maybe we should examine the history from which the word emerged.