In today’s English, a Luddite is someone who hates technology, especially whatever the the current version is. History treats them as a foolish cult that destroyed industrial machinery because they thought it was a tool of the devil or something. In truth, though, the Luddites were not just reasonable, but correct.
Advances in technology quite often reduce the amount of work required. In a society focused on bettering the lot of humanity, that would mean that everyone benefits from the technology. In contrast, a dystopia like our current society leverages labor-saving devices to eliminate paid positions, and then those workers are simply without an income. If you’re living in a dystopia like ours, and they come out with a new labor-saving device, that device is your enemy by proxy because your enemies are going to use it to harm you.
The Industrial Revolution was between around 1733 and 1913, and was basically when western society went through a major shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy with mass production. Mass production meant that many kinds of jobs that had previously required a skilled worker could be done by anyone, and that meant the pay for those jobs dropped dramatically. The Luddites were workers who destroyed cotton and woolen mills between 1811 and 1816; the didn’t do it because they hated technology, but because this specific technology was being leveraged by capitalists to make them poorer; they were skilled tradespeople who were being destroyed economically by this new technology. The Luddites were right, but capitalist propaganda succeeded and now most people believe they were fools who were afraid of technology.
What began in the Industrial Revolution has continued since then, and now, even skilled workers like medical doctors might eventually be replaced by automated systems. Doctoring will probably still be a safe career for a while, but truck drivers are about to get flushed down the toilet of history thanks to a recent change in the regulations regarding automobiles by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those changes now officially allow for a vehicle operating on US roads to lack any kind of direct controls for a human driver. What was once the most common job in 29 of the 50 states will eventually dwindle until it is almost unheard of to have that job, but the initial effect of this change might happen very soon (i.e., in the next few years) as the drop in demand for truck drivers pushes down wages for all of them. For details on this particular change, please see this video by Transport Evolved.
In addition to automating delivery vehicles, fleets of stocking robots are now going into service. Add a few robotic forklifts into the mix and now your self-checkout retail store has eliminated 95% of human workers. You’re down to just the security contractor, the repair contractors, and maybe a few onsite human managers.
Walmart is leading the way in automating retail (and eliminating retail employees), yet Walmart is also employs more people than any other company in America. Amazon is on track to overtake Walmart; it, too, is working toward automating everything. How will America keep buying stuff from Walmart and Amazon if everyone is losing their jobs to automation? Something will have to change. Either people will force the wealthy to allow them to exist (e.g., through some kind of Universal Basic Income or perhaps a series of welfare programs) or the wealthy will decide to abandon capitalism and directly control resources through force (and leave most of humanity to die). There’s certainly a third option (democracy), and though it isn’t very popular, it is the one we recommend. Will working-class Americans every be able to clear their heads of the misinformation flooding their world and see that a better world is possible? It seems like the answer is “no” and we’re running out of time.