21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns such as job loss, loss of control, and cultural values, reflecting the historical labor struggle of the original Luddite movement.

"The 21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns about job replacement, loss of control, and cultural values, similar to the historical Luddite movement that opposed mass production methods that made their skills obsolete."

"The 21st century Luddites' resistance to new technology is driven by concerns about job security, loss of control and autonomy, and the potential for technological change to disrupt traditional practices and cultural values. These concerns are rooted in the historical context of the Luddite movement, where machines replaced workers and led to exploitation by capitalists."

The 21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns about job replacement, job loss, and the loss of control and autonomy, as well as the threat to traditional practices and cultural values.

"The 21st century Luddites' resistance to new technology is driven by concerns about job security, loss of control and autonomy, and the potential disruption of traditional practices, as technological advancements threaten to replace certain professions and reduce earnings."

Andrew Luck prefers a flip phone due to personal preference, comfort, and a desire to avoid constant connection, highlighting that one doesn't have to be connected 24/7.

People may be resistant to new technologies due to various factors, including regulatory pressures, lack of awareness, and fear of job replacement, which is consistent with the historical context of the Luddite movement.

The Luddite opposition to new technology is rooted in the fear of job loss and the protection of workers' rights, as evident from the historical context of the Luddite revolt.

The Luddites' opposition to new technology was driven by the potential negative impact on their jobs and working conditions, and this reasoning can be applied to the 21st century context.

The Luddite opposition to new technology is driven by the fear of job loss, a concern that is still relevant in the 21st century with the rise of automation and technological advancements.

Luddite opposition to new technology is often driven by fear of job loss, as technological advancements can lead to unemployment and disenfranchisement of workers.

Luddite opposition to new technology is often driven by the fear of job loss, as new technologies can lead to unemployment and replace traditional professions.

Social activists may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about technological unemployment and its potential to create a large population of unskilled and unemployed individuals.

"Some social activists, including liberals and leftists, may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about their negative impact on society."

Social activists may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about their impact on communities and social structures, and may resist new technologies as part of broader social movements.

Eco-anarchists and other social activists may oppose new technologies due to concerns about the environment and social justice, viewing the techno-industrial system as a threat to life on earth.

Social activists, including anarchists and far-right groups, may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century as part of their goal to destroy techno-industrial society.

Government initiatives can play a crucial role in addressing resistance to new technologies by facilitating a transition to a low-carbon economy and promoting community engagement.

A common reason for opposing new technology is the fear of job loss or negative impact on working conditions, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites.

The fear of job loss is a significant reason for opposing new technology, as it has the potential to replace human workers with automated systems and artificial intelligence.

The fear of job loss is a significant reason for opposing new technology, as it can lead to job displacement and automation.

The fear of job loss is a common reason for opposing new technology, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites and still relevant in the 21st century.

The opposition to new technology in the 21st century can be attributed to the fear of job loss, which is a concept rooted in the idea of 'technological unemployment'. This fear is driven by the uncertainty surrounding the impact of new technological solutions on employment.

The Luddite revolt was actually a labor movement fighting for workers' rights and jobs, rather than being against technology itself.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the use of technology to exploit workers, rather than being against technology itself. This historical context can inform our understanding of modern-day resistance to new technologies.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the introduction of new machines, which they believed were threatening their jobs and transferring wealth from workers to employers. Understanding this historical context can help in addressing concerns about new technologies in the 21st century.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the introduction of new machinery, which they believed threatened their jobs. This historical context can help understand the reasons behind resistance to new technologies in the 21st century.

"The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the replacement of human labor with machines, and the lack of consideration for workers' well-being. This historical context can help understand the reasons behind the resistance to new technologies in the 21st century, including concerns about job security and the pace of change."

21st century Luddites fear a technocratic society where technology exploits and controls humanity, rather than serving it, as evident from the passage's description of a world where technology has failed to address major problems and the commentary on the excesses of a society reliant on digital entertainment.

"Economic crises can contribute to fear and resistance to change, as seen in the example of Germany's economic crisis turning into a political one, highlighting the potential for economic uncertainty to drive opposition to new technologies or ways of working."

Economic crises can lead to fear and resistance to change, as seen in the historical example of workers resisting changes to their working conditions and job security during times of economic hardship.

"Famous figures like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates have been labeled as Luddites for warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, highlighting concerns about its impact on society and human well-being."

Famous figures such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates have been labeled as Luddites for warning about the dangers of AI, contributing to a modern neo-Luddist impulse.

"The introduction of new technologies or services can lead to regulatory disputes, among other issues, highlighting the need to consider the potential consequences of technological advancements."

The introduction of new technologies or services, such as artificial intelligence, can lead to regulatory disputes and raise concerns about employment and the need for modern law to restrain its effects.

Introducing new technologies or services can lead to regulatory disputes and other issues, including concerns about job security and exploitation.

Someone might oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, recognizing that these changes could be used against them in their context as workers.

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, as they may perceive these changes as a threat to their jobs or livelihood, similar to the historical Luddites who resisted the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution."

Someone might oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that it may threaten their job security or traditional skills, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites and modern-day resistance to technological change.

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that automation and technological advancements will replace their professions and lead to unemployment, as seen in the historical context of Luddites and the supervisor's resistance in the background information."

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that these changes will threaten their jobs or livelihoods, echoing the historical concerns of the Luddites."

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, driven by uncertainty and disturbing trends.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, particularly in America, which is experiencing symptoms of decline such as wealth inequality and poor infrastructure.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, characterized by a decline of the political center and a trend of resistance to change, which may be related to the fear of job loss and uncertainty.

The shift away from a culture of progress is observed in the Western world, where people are resisting technological change and complacency, as seen in the city streets where climate activists are protesting against the destruction of the natural world.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, where policies addressing climate change have become targets of the political right, indicating a resistance to new ideas and technologies.

21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns such as job loss, loss of control, and cultural values, reflecting the historical labor struggle of the original Luddite movement.

Title:

Content: Brian Merchant, author: “Luddites are more dangerous to the rich than Robin Hood”

The Luddites have been a great historical resource. Any showy enemy of anything that looked like technological progress has been called a Luddite. Today with generative artificial intelligence and its critics, the word has been revived. The author and journalist Brian Merchant (Iowa City, USA, 1983) saw it coming and has written a book that reviews the Luddite revolt in England at the beginning of the 19th century and its similarities with current technologies: Blood in the Machine (Blood in the Machine, currently without a planned edition in Spanish) thus explores the origins of the current revolt against big technology.

Although the book has appeared in the midst of the AI hype, Merchant began his research a decade ago: “Uber was growing and it was beginning to be seen that it was having a hard impact on taxi drivers, I heard the term Luddite from the pro-Uber sector and wrote an article titled You don't understand anything about Luddites”. Now in his book he remembers that the Luddite revolt was a labor struggle, not anti-technology, at a time when unions were prohibited. In a conversation with EL PAÍS from his residence in Los Angeles, Merchant clarifies the historical impact of the Luddites and the possible similar struggles that are being played today in Silicon Valley.

1. The Luddites were not against progress

The labor revolt over the loss of rights was more important than the destruction of textile machines: “The biggest mistake about the Luddites is to say that they were against technology and progress,” says Merchant. “They were against certain technologies because they recognized the way in which they were going to be used in their context against them as workers. It was a labor movement, against poverty, not anti-technology. The British Government began to mold them in this way almost immediately, it was keen to mock the Luddites and present the argument that they were against progress. It is very similar to how today people in positions of power in technology companies accuse those who complain about poor working conditions. It's the same story for 200 years.”

The book quotes a phrase from historian Eric Hobsbawm that explains this stage: “It was collective bargaining through riots.” According to Merchant, this tactic in a workers' struggle was very powerful for two reasons: “First, it was symbolic because everyone understood that what they were destroying was not just a machine. It was also the specific machine used to transfer wealth from the workers to the employer. Second, it was useful because they destroyed the equipment that businessmen needed.”

2. Why Robin Hood is better accepted than Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd was a legendary character. No one knows for sure if he existed. It was the legend of a teenager who would have broken the first machines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1811, rebellious workers used his legendary name to sign letters and further scare: “Ludd probably never existed. But the incarnation of it would become a mascot, an organizational tool, a wink: a powerful 19th-century meme,” Merchant writes.

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Ludd lived near Nottingham (United Kingdom), like another legendary figure who has been better treated by history. There must be a reason, says Merchant: “The Luddites organized a popular and powerful rebellion. People wrote popular songs about them. They were like Robin Hood. But it is interesting that Robin Hood has endured as a positive light, while the Luddites have not. He suggests that the myth of Ned Ludd is in some ways more dangerous to the elites and the wealthy than that of Robin Hood, which is a little more nebulous and open. The Luddites say: go ahead and break the machines of your oppression. Robin Hood says: steal from the rich and give to the poor. “I think that’s a little more tolerable.”

3. How are they similar to today's problems?

The background of the book is that the history of the Luddites is similar to what happens today in Silicon Valley, where a small group of corporations dominate new technologies. “The way technologies are developed has basically not changed. You have a handful of people with access to enough capital or political influence to be able to build a factory and use automation technologies. “Back then, the most aggressive owners didn’t ask anyone how to find a way to make this a win-win.”

Merchant has received criticism for equating the great businessmen of 19th century England with 21st century America. But there are details that he does not see that far away: “The technology development process is in some ways even more undemocratic today than then. There is this immense pool of capital available to Silicon Valley innovators through venture capital. Uber wasn't profitable for 10 years, but they had access to that capital. Did anyone really like that? Did it work for workers and delivery people? Nothing mattered, they just had more money and moved on.”

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"The 21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns about job replacement, loss of control, and cultural values, similar to the historical Luddite movement that opposed mass production methods that made their skills obsolete."

Title:

Content: The new is the old well forgotten.
Where in the Network there was a fashionable insult to the opponents of AI
In the Internet discourse, deep in the study of sarcastic comments of anonymous persons, you can find the term "Luddite".
This label is often referred to as people who dare to express the slightest inclination to inhibit the constant development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Related video
Interestingly, such prominent figures as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have been awarded the Luddite Award, which is recognition of their cautionary position regarding the potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence.
During the ceremony, Robert D. Atkinson, the organizer of the award, noted: “Unfortunately, luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have contributed to the feverish refraction of hands about the impending apocalypse of artificial intelligence, ” writes IFLScience.
In Focus.Technology appeared its own Telegram-channel.
Subscribe not to miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!
Atkinson also explained: "Do we consider any of them personally Luddites?
No, of course not.
They are pioneers of science and technology.
But they and others have done a disservice to the public — and undoubtedly have helped and comforted the increasingly common neo-Luddist impulse in modern society — by demonizing AI in the popular imagination.
But how did the term come about?
Its roots can be traced back to the early 1800s in England.
Before the industrial revolution, skilled craftsmen who knew a lot about textile production made clothes using their own machines and specialized tools.
However, a situation arose when new technologies and methods of mass production appeared, as a result of which artisans were unable to compete.
The result was a movement whose purpose was the destruction of the textile industry and the destruction of new machines.
Although there is some truth to this story, it does not reflect the whole essence of the Luddite movement.
Their actions were not driven solely by a reaction to new technologies; rather, they were a response to the profound transformations taking place in their professional activities.
While it is true that they often attacked a knitting machine known as a stocking frame, as well as other mechanized fixtures, their main concern was the labor practices associated with these machines.
Kevin Binfield, editor of the Luddite and Compassionate Works, explained their motives: "They simply wanted machines to produce high-quality goods, and that these machines employed workers who had been trained and received fair wages.
It was their only concern. ”
The nickname "Luddites" comes from the nickname "Ned Ludd", an apocryphal figure who allegedly sabotaged a textile factory in 1779, although historical evidence suggests that this man was most likely a fictional one.
In a 2007 paper, researcher David Linton explained: “Some say that a young man, possibly with cognitive impairment, named Ned Ludd once misunderstood an order and accidentally broke his frame machine.
Others argue that this was done deliberately, in a fit of anger.
Whatever the motive, it seems to have become a joke phrase that whenever the machine breaks, for whatever reason, you can say something like, "Ludd must have been here."
From this construction, it is a short step to the ironic application of the name Ludd to vandalism for political purposes. "
Between 1811 and 1816, the Luddite movement held sporadic and somewhat unorganized protests, characterized by the destruction of cars and the burning of factories.
In response, the mill owners resorted to extreme measures, using deadly force against the Luddites.
In April 1812, there was a grim turning point in Huddersfield, where at least four people died at the hands of the mill owners.
In retaliation, the Luddites killed the owner of the mill, William Horsfall, who boldly declared his intention to "smear himself with Luddite blood to the saddles."
Horsfall was shot while sitting on his horse.
Faced with these uprisings, the government immediately sent thousands of soldiers to quell the protests.
Moreover, they adopted a law according to which the breakdown of cars was subject to the death penalty or sending to colonies.
Subsequently, the movement dissipated, but the stable expression "Luddite" could not accurately convey the ideals and goals of the Luddites.
Previously, Focus wrote about the first IPSO in the history of mankind.
It turns out that it was invented in Babylon and it concerns the Flood.

"The 21st century Luddites' resistance to new technology is driven by concerns about job security, loss of control and autonomy, and the potential for technological change to disrupt traditional practices and cultural values. These concerns are rooted in the historical context of the Luddite movement, where machines replaced workers and led to exploitation by capitalists."

Title:

Content: Science, Technology and Humanities Joint Lecture / Who will be Marx in the AI era?
A few years ago, I went to the Red Square in Moscow and saw the monument of Karl Marx ’ s bust at the southern end of the square. As I drew, I thought of Marx ’ s Capital in 1867, which pointed out that the development of machines led to the exploitation and destruction of the ecology of capitalism, affecting the working people ’ s labor and changing the mode of production, creating a vast proletariat.
"The steam engine itself did not cause the industrial revolution", but "the creation of the machine tool is the real reason for the steam engine revolution".
After the widespread use and continuous improvement of the "machine tool", the division of labor process resulting in "machine cooperation" enabled the industrial revolution, which began in the 1760s, to use large amounts of labor and machinery for rapid production.
But at the same time, the machine is also crowded to the workers, forming a competitive relationship.
The labor force of the machine appeared and immediately became a competitor of the workers.
Capitalists use machines to proliferate automatically, in direct proportion to the number of workers whose survival conditions are destroyed by machines.
The whole capitalist system of production is based on the fact that the workers sell their labour power as a commodity.
The division of labor makes this workforce one-sided, so that workers have only the skills to operate local tools.
Once a tool is manipulated by a machine, the exchange value of labor disappears along with its use value.
The workers will be immediately unemployed.
In order to combat the unreasonable exploitation of employers, many large-scale labor movements rose up, such as the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England in 1819, the workers ’ uprising in Lyon, France in the 1830s, and the first general strike in Britain in 1842.
The revolt of the German Silesian textile workers in 1844, which caused great casualties, became the benchmark event of the proletariat against capitalist exploitation. As the mode of production advanced, the existing social organization became inefficient and conflicted with economic activity, which in turn developed into a class struggle.
More than two hundred years later, human creativity in the 21st century has taken another giant leap, and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has advanced rapidly, resulting in a new wave of industrial revolution.
More than the steam engine of the 18th century, people found that in addition to carrying out a variety of heavy and complex tasks, AI can also reason, abstract thinking, quickly learn and understand complex ideas, with more efficient productivity, and modern law is difficult to restrain.
"AI itself did not cause an industrial revolution", but "the creation of AI machine tools makes the AI revolution necessary."
As the world repeats Marx's "Capital Theory" narrative, with the rapid development of the AI industry, many people's job opportunities are gradually reduced, many jobs are eliminated, and countless families are forced to face unemployment.
As a result, the 1842 general strike struck Hollywood ’ s largest strike in 2023 for similar reasons, with writers and actors protesting against the replacement of their creations and performances by AI, undermining the profit sharing mechanism on which they depend. History is repeating itself, and it will be lawyers, mathematicians, accountants, or professors who will rise next?
When the actor strikes, the male protagonist of "Destiny Poisoner" cries out loudly: "We will not allow you to take away our dignity!" And who will be the 21st century Marx, writing "AI Capital Theory", stirring up a revolution, subverting the evil capitalist who uses AI to exploit the white collar?
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The little money of the rich can save many poor children.
The front page of the "United Daily News" reported that Taiwan has fallen into "physical poverty". In particular, it pointed out that the causes of poverty are linked together, not "not enough effort", and that a large factor of poverty is due to education.
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The rich are the contented, but the feeling of poverty leads to fear.
Friends and sisters met and asked: “Where are the children? How many are their grandchildren? ”“ The children are all working in the north, and they are not married. ” I replied.
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The 21st century Luddites resist new technology due to concerns about job replacement, job loss, and the loss of control and autonomy, as well as the threat to traditional practices and cultural values.

"The 21st century Luddites' resistance to new technology is driven by concerns about job security, loss of control and autonomy, and the potential disruption of traditional practices, as technological advancements threaten to replace certain professions and reduce earnings."

Title:

Content: Treading the AI path sensibly

… while learning from past tech revolutions

Ajit Balakrishnan

5 min read Last Updated : Nov 5 2023 | 9:24 PM IST

Every two decades or so, we, humans, are forced to deal with a technological wave that tests the limits of our intelligence and survival skills, and the current wave of artificial intelligence is one such testing time. These tech waves all have some things in common. When one such tech wave first emerges, an infinitesimally small minority of us is busy shouting out its praises, while the rest of us keep wondering what these lunatics are wasting their time and ours for. Then, as the tech wave gathers force, a sense of anxiety grips the thinkers among us. Once the wave gathers force, we look around and see the price the tech wave is extracting from our society with no real benefits in sight. And finally, by the time the benefits to society start appearing, we struggle to make the changes demanded of us as humans so that we can benefit from the wave.

The artificial intelligence tech wave (ChatGPT is an early example from this wave) is right now at the second stage as described above, where the thinkers and policymakers among us are anxiety-struck and are busy issuing policy diktats and forming expert committees — the latest one is by US President Joe Biden, who, a few days ago, issued such a diktat which, since it has come from the United States, a country normally in the forefront of embracing tech waves, is getting a lot of attention. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also called a group of countries to discuss the possibility of similar diktats. The American and British anxieties have some common themes: AI should not be weaponised by terrorists and cyber criminals, methods should be devised to spot fake news and fake images, and, most of all, their countries should not fall behind in the race to win the AI battle. But there is little mention about what we can learn from similar tech waves of the past and what opportunities and what threats to watch out for. So, let me do that for you.

The first such tech wave was the industrial revolution, which first emerged in the 1750s in Manchester, England, and worked its way through society and the world during the next 100 years. What it achieved was constructing machines that did the spinning and weaving of cotton fibre and cloth at many times the speed of human spinners and weavers, and powered not by humans or animals but by a new gadget called the steam engine. Of course, the entrepreneurs who put all this together sang its praise as a “revolution” but other some observers, like the two German visitors to Manchester, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, thought it was the worst thing that mankind had encountered and organised a world movement against it, communism, which is still with us today. Very few people at that time applauded what the industrial revolution truly did: It made cotton clothes affordable not just for the landed wealthy but also for the common man throughout the world. And, of course, enterprising political entrepreneurs like Mohandas Gandhi used the widespread anxiety about the power and “magic” (something we have not seen before) of spinning and weaving machines to organise the Indian independence movement and evict the British from India.

The chemical industrial revolution, which followed, made it possible with synthetic indigo blue, for example, to have cloth dyed in attractive colours and then went on to use that chemistry knowledge to create synthetic chemical fibres like nylon and polyester, which allowed cheap clothing. But all this came at a price. One such example is that of the more than 80 cotton textile mills, which had made Bombay the industrial centre of India in the 1950s, found by the 1980s that they could no longer sell the cotton cloth they manufactured and consequently found it difficult to pay wages to their 150,000 workers, who then went on strike, ending with the closure of practically all these mills. Of course, practically all analysts (surprisingly even today) blame the mills’ closure on “labour unions trouble” and even today ignore the true cause: The chemical revolution, which created the insanely popular synthetic polyester and nylon fabric for saris, dhotis, shirts, trousers, bedsheets, etc, making their cotton equivalents defunct.

There have been other such tech waves as well with similar benefits and costs but, for the moment, let’s skip them and see what lies ahead for us in the age of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Let’s learn from the examples of the industrial and chemical revolutions and locate what features to look for and what pains to minimise in this one. What products or services will the artificial-intelligence revolution make cheaper and more affordable and what jobs will they make redundant?

Is it likely that the first group of services to be made cheaper are those supplied by “professions” like doctors, lawyers, bankers, writers, filmmakers, and school and college teachers (the list is not complete)? Will all these services be done by ChatBots and the like in the next few years at a price that is a small fraction of what they cost users today? Will this mean that such services will become affordable to all of India’s citizens and not just for the well-to-do as it is at present? If so, is there a strong possibility that these professions will shrink dramatically in their earnings and numbers, just as the spinners and weavers did? Are these professions not the backbone of what we treasure as the Indian middle class, and can we allow that to be threatened by the  artificial-intelligence revolution?

And, most worrisome, will these disruptions be met with strong resistance and even revolts as past tech revolutions have done? Or can sensible policies allow us to reap the productivity gains from artificial intelligence while making this transition peaceful?

The writer (ajitb@rediffmail.com) is an internet entrepreneur
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper

Topics :BS Opinionartifical intelligenceTechieTechnology

First Published: Nov 5 2023 | 9:24 PM IST

Next Story

Andrew Luck prefers a flip phone due to personal preference, comfort, and a desire to avoid constant connection, highlighting that one doesn't have to be connected 24/7.

Title:

Content: Andrew Luck Finally Upgrades His Flip Phone … To Another Flip Phone

Intro: Andrew Luck has made it clear that he’s not interested in joining the world of smartphones. He’s just fine with his flip phone, and he finally got an upgrade this week.

INDIANAPOLIS — Has Andrew Luck finally turned in his ancient flip phone for a smartphone?

No. No he has not.

But, he did get a new flip phone this week.

The Indianapolis Colts quarterback on Thursday shared on his Facebook account that his mobile carrier had hooked him up with a new phone.

In June, Luck became the recipient of the most lucrative contract in NFL history, and many wondered if the fifth-year Stanford product was going to splurge on the newest smartphone for himself.

"One, I like it. It's a comfort thing," Luck said of not giving up the flip phone lifestyle. "I think anybody can appreciate that, if you're used to that. … Two, I don't think I want to be connected 24/7, and this phone is maybe sort of a reminder that you don't have to be connected. And it's nice to get away. It's nice to turn your phone off."

Luck's phone at that time — and his new one, we assume — can send and receive text messages, and for all the newest crazes in apps and technology, he says he has an iPad.

"What else do you need?" Luck asked. "I'm not a Luddite."

Luddite | Ludd·ite | Noun: "One of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly :  one who is opposed to especially technological change." Thank you, Merriam Webster.

Nice word choice, Andrew. Looks like his "Andrew Luck Book Club" is paying huge dividends.

While many of us (including the author of this article) remain glued to their smartphones, Luck is obviously content with what's gotten him to this point in life.

Smartphone or flip phone — or rotary phone — he's back on the field and healthy for the Indianapolis Colts, and that's all that should matter to his fans and his organization.

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People may be resistant to new technologies due to various factors, including regulatory pressures, lack of awareness, and fear of job replacement, which is consistent with the historical context of the Luddite movement.

Title:

Content: You will not miss us!
8,008 followers
Why robots will take your job, and what to do - panic or rejoice
Why robots will take away your profession.
Increasingly, you can hear about the challenges posed by automation and cybernization to existing professions today.
And we are talking not only about unmanned vehicles and chatbots replacing call center operators, but also about programs that can calculate bank loans and insurance rates, depriving analysts and, moreover, neural networks that claim to compete with highly qualified and creative employees.
Exemption from routine or danger of unemployment?
A cause for concern or long-awaited freedom?
History of the problem
Mechanisms of ancient times.
Competition has always existed – professions disappeared and arose, people fought for jobs with each other and with technology, philosophers and economists built forecasts and tried to predict the prospects and are still doing it.
For example, you can assess how much automation threatens your profession and how quickly robots will replace you by using Will Robots Take My Job.
Aristotle was the first to think about the possibility of transferring “work ” to machines.
In the first book of his Politics, he suggested that they could evolve to such an extent that the need for human labor would disappear.
For him, quite in line with the views of work at the time, as something distracting from participation in public life and personal development, this was an extremely optimistic forecast.
“Work ” in ancient Greece was considered to be the lot of the lower classes, and the mechanisms would only liberate slaves, considered nothing but“ machines of flesh and blood. ”
The reorientation of the economy to the export of wool led to the introduction of a policy of “enclosures ”.
The real competition of a sufficiently large mass of people technology for the first time was only more than a millennium and a half later in England.
At first, the reorientation of the economy to wool exports led to the introduction of a policy of “fencing ”, in which landlords expelled farmers from the fields in order to free the territory for sheep grazing, which led to the first massive surge of“ unemployment ” – albeit not in the current sense.
The then arising vagrancy and poverty contemporary of these events, the Chancellor of England and philosopher Thomas More described the famous "sheep ate people."
However, after a few decades it became clear that no – not eaten.
The former peasants were absorbed by the growing cities, where they found a new job in textile manufactures, processing the same wool obtained from shearing sheep.
This was the first example of how, by taking away one thing, “technology ” is able to offer something different.
But we must admit: the process of urbanization was painful, the work that replaced the cultivation of land turned out to be hard and dirty, the gap with the traditional way of life was very traumatic, and the population of England as a result of hunger and the fight against vagrancy, which was conducted, including the use of gallows, decreased, according to some estimates by 30% (to understand the scale - the Soviet Union during the Second World War lost "only" 15% of the population).
Workers in a textile factory, late 18th century.
The next episode of the confrontation between people and technology occurred a century later in the same field of light industry - the invention in 1785 by Edmund Cartwright of a mechanical loom increased labor productivity forty times.
Jobs that had just been lost were once again lost.
But again temporarily – after spinning machines, others appeared and all of them demanded new resources, and their extraction – new types of labor.
Manufactures were replaced by factories, and muscle strength by the power of steam obtained from coal.
Machine Destroyers
The Luddite movement.
This time, the changes that occurred were met with bayonets - there was a movement of Luddites.
Sabotage of work and direct action: attacks on factories and the destruction of machines caused a harsh reaction of the state, which sent troops to suppress the “army of Ned Ludd ”.
It is characteristic that no one at the top bothered to convey to the workers the idea that there will still be work for them, even if not the one to which they had time to get used.
The fact is that the “top ” themselves at that time did not think too much about how all this was arranged, and people were perceived as expendable material, while the inertia of consciousness of ordinary workers who had just recovered from the transition from the agrarian to the urban way of life was also very high.
The First Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 18th century.
The theoretical basis for the interaction of technological innovations and the masses of labor began to be summed up only by economists and philosophers of the middle of the XIX century.
They were the first to suggest that the disappearance of certain types of work in the process of technological development entails the emergence of new ones, and “work ” as a whole is not something final, which may be“ not enough ”.
The First Industrial Revolution was in full swing and the optimism of its apologists only grew stronger over time.
By the end of the century, it seemed that progress would eliminate not only social problems and contradictions, but could also rid humanity of wars.
However, while some spoke of the "Luddite delusion", others spoke of the "enslavement of the masses" and the need to hand over to the "factory workers", predicting that as long as the instruments of production are in the hands of the big proprietors, their employees will remain disenfranchised, and the lack of social security will cause explosions of unemployment at any moment.
Second wave
The Second Industrial Revolution.
The word “unemployment ” came into being at that time.
The fact is that a peasant working in the fields or a craftsman who provides for the needs of himself and the small surrounding community could not face something like this - he himself formed his employment.
When the scheme of selling labor on a strict schedule became mass within the framework of fulfilling a strictly regulated set of duties, the challenge arose to lose such an opportunity.
The Second Industrial Revolution was on the way.
The basics of streaming production were laid at the end of the 19th century, and by the beginning of the 20th century, the combination of Ford ’ s marketing strategy (he invented that the car was not an attribute of the elites, but a mass need) and the conveyor he introduced led to new changes that went beyond factories and factories.
On January 18, 1886, the first car invented by Karl Benz was released.
It was the emergence of technology on the streets of cities that brought a new wave of competition.
Look at the photos of the streets of the beginning of the last century: here they are dammed with carts, among which a lonely clumsy car is trying to maneuver, but ten years later, the only horse frightened by the roar of engines and sobbing of klaxons is clutching to the sidewalks.
Here it will be important to note how unpredictable this jump became: “At the beginning of the 20th century, the French Academy warned about an environmental disaster, which inevitably should lead to the accumulation of horse manure associated with the development of horse-drawn transport in Paris, ” recalls, reasoning about the prediction of the future Stanislav Lem.
However, note: in those regions where human labor is cheaper, technology can not replace it, as we are shown, for example, rickshaws, until recently used their own muscle power and only with a sharp drop in the cost of small vehicles motorized.
A more modern example is “computer rickshaws ” – hundreds of thousands of low-skilled Chinese, hacked captchas all day, because their work costs less than the introduction of scripts.
Technological unemployment
The line of the American unemployed during the Great Depression.
In the 1930s, Maynard Keynes, who gave the world the theory of the “social state ”, from the attempts of which many economies have not recovered so far, introduced the term“ technological unemployment ” into mass circulation.
Since then, the debate about whether the introduction of new technological solutions and opportunities can create a long-term job crisis or whether everything is limited to repurposing, when obsolete professions are replaced by new ones, and it is enough for people to change or improve their skills.
Until the end of the last decade, most experts were inclined to believe that “technological unemployment ” is always a temporary phenomenon, leading to the renewal and improvement of the professionalism of workers.
Mechanical labor was replaced by physical labor, the operator - a profession more status and highly paid than the worker, the reduction of costs leads to the release of time - these are the main theses sounded then.
Pessimistic views remained largely the domain of marginals, such as Theodore Kaczynski, famous for his terrorist struggle against progress under the name of Unabomber and primitive philosophers.
Pessimism
The first full-fledged computer in the USSR BESM-1.
Cautious voices expressing doubts about the correctness of this approach sounded even then.
And if in one of his speeches in 1962, President Kennedy said that “if people are able to invent new machines that take away their jobs, even more so are able to invent new jobs, ” then two years later, a letter from scientists and activists concerned with the problem of technological unemployment, sent to his successor, Lyndon Johnson, stated that“ a revolution in cybernetics will create a separate nation of poor, unskilled unemployed. ”.
Theorists disputed the impossibility of long-term unemployment, as did Martin Ford in the book “Light in the Tunnel: Automation, Acceleration of Technology and the Economy of the Future ” or Marshall Brains in“ Robotic Nation ”.
Gasne-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann, in their Global Trap, describe a society in which the labor of twenty percent of the population is enough for the world economy to continue to develop.
There are those who see it as a threat and a danger, like Paul Krugmann in his article “Sympathy for the Luddites ” or Frey and Osborne in“ The Future of Work. ”
In addition, in practice, it turned out that technology is not so freeing up time – for example, representatives of professions requiring high qualifications, at least in the United States today work more than 30 years ago, and technologies that provide remote access to working tools allow them not to break away from professional tasks and in their “free time ”.
It is also important that new jobs, as it was noticed at the beginning of the XXI century, are created not so much by technology as by the change in the way of life that they entail.
So in the mid-2010s, nine out of ten working people are employed in professions that did not exist a century earlier, but only 5% of the jobs that appeared from 1993 to 2013 are in high-tech areas, such as IT or telecom.
However, the question is whether this does not mean that indirectly they still arise due to technologies that provide an opportunity for development for the service sector.
Is it bad?
A shot from the film "I, Robot" (2004).
Harvard economics professor Lawrence Summers, who previously served as U.S. Treasury Secretary, said in 2014 that he no longer believes that automation will always create new jobs and that it is not some hypothetical possibility in the future; it is something that is emerging now.
In his opinion, the changes will be very global and will lead to mass unemployment not only among low-skilled employees, but also for “blue ” and“ white ” collar workers, because “there are many reasons to think that the software revolution will be even more significant than the agrarian one. ”
The robot prepares food.
However, this is what allows us to look to the future with optimism.
Summers ’ s thought of the meaning of the digital revolution echoes the position of futurologist Alvin Toffler.
As early as 1970, in his book Future Shock, he wrote that by comparing the Digital Revolution with the Industrial Revolution, we downplay its significance and it would be more correct to draw a parallel with the exit of mankind from caves and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding.
Potentially, this means that humanity is on the verge of an unprecedented, unknown written history civilizational leap of colossal proportions.
And, due to the fact that the speed of changes in the world has increased many times and now, the fact that in the case of the end of the Stone Age, took millennia, is being carried out in front of one, a maximum of a couple or three generations, this breakthrough, of course, will be painful.
However, having reviewed the usual way of life, the attitude to it and their values, will not humanity be able to break through to the conditions of life, previously even unimaginable.
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991).
We are easily accustomed to such changes in “work ” as freelancing and remote work, quite calmly came to a repeated change of professions, instead of a continuous, decades-long“ career ” and even were able to include them in your life, saying that this is the way to find yourself.
So is it not time to begin to accustom ourselves to the idea that, as economic historian Robert Skidelsky said, “Sooner or later we will run out of work ”?
After all, freelancing and remote employment are about freedom, about leaving the “office slavery ” and searching for the way of life that is convenient for us.
Yes, to get used to the idea that the traditional “work ” is over and now we will have to independently invent what to occupy ourselves will not be easy.
It will require responsibility, but it is freedom.
Isn ’ t it time for us, joyfully exclaiming “Glory to the robots! ”, to go in search of our place in the new world?
Why robots will take away your profession.
The fact that it is not only about robots, but also about the “work ” itself and the possibility of life without it, about the risks associated with negative scenarios of confrontation between people and machines and the possibilities of overcoming them, we will talk in the next parts of the cycle.
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The Luddite opposition to new technology is rooted in the fear of job loss and the protection of workers' rights, as evident from the historical context of the Luddite revolt.

The Luddites' opposition to new technology was driven by the potential negative impact on their jobs and working conditions, and this reasoning can be applied to the 21st century context.

The Luddite opposition to new technology is driven by the fear of job loss, a concern that is still relevant in the 21st century with the rise of automation and technological advancements.

Luddite opposition to new technology is often driven by fear of job loss, as technological advancements can lead to unemployment and disenfranchisement of workers.

Luddite opposition to new technology is often driven by the fear of job loss, as new technologies can lead to unemployment and replace traditional professions.

Social activists may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about technological unemployment and its potential to create a large population of unskilled and unemployed individuals.

"Some social activists, including liberals and leftists, may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about their negative impact on society."

Title:

Content: Artificial Intelligence and the Curse of the Machine Gods

Image by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė.

Sometime back in 2008 I was having a conversation with an FBI agent. This is not something I would normally care to do, but in this case it was a family member—my half-brother, who is fourteen years older than me. We didn’t grow up together and have never particularly liked each other, and his wife and I share an intense mutual loathing, but at the time I was making an effort to be more present in the lives of their two young daughters, my nieces.

We were sitting in the living room of their home in Simi Valley, where cops move so they don’t have to live in L.A. with real people. The tedious babble of a televised football game was droning in the background. Following a thread of conversation I’ve long since forgotten, we somehow got onto to the topic of theft and morality. My brother said to me—and this is an exact quote—Are you one of those people who thinks it’s wrong to steal from a mom & pop store, but it’s okay to steal from Wal-Mart because it’s a big corporation?

Sensing my time to shine, I replied as follows: in order for me to believe that it would be “stealing” to take something from Wal-Mart without paying for it, I would first have to believe that Wal-Mart is capable of owning something. I don’t.

He was immediately confused. I continued.

In my view, you must have consciousness and will in order to own something. Wal-Mart has neither of those things; it is a construct. It may have stores and employees, managers and board members, but essentially it’s a legal fiction—a synthetic entity. Wal-Mart really only exists on paper, and it’s only because of consensus social agreement—and fear of law enforcement—that it can be said to have any claim at all to its warehouses of tacky furniture and sweatshop clothing.

The “synthetic entity” part really got him; he froze like an old computer. I could almost hear the cogs of his mind grinding as he tried to process an idea that was completely alien to his worldview.

Thanks to certain rulings of the good ol’ Supreme Court, these synthetic entities have all of the “rights” of individual citizens, yet none of the liabilities… like mortality. There is not a single human servitor of Wal-Mart who is not replaceable, from the CEO to the door greeters. Like all employees of giant corporations, they’re basically wetware, serving the needs of a more or less immortal construct.

You may have figured out where I’m going with this: corporations are a form of artificial intelligence. I hate to be the one to break it to y’all, but our society was conquered by A.I. generations ago.

I call them machine gods; “gods,” because they’re fundamentally disembodied—they are primarily conceptual, like, say, Hermes. “Machines,” because they don’t have any actual will or consciousness—what they have is programming; they take objects and convert them into money, which is essentially the same thing as saying they convert objects into power. The objects themselves are created by transforming the living—trees, livestock, landscapes, sweatshop workers—into the dead.

A fun, old-fashioned occult word for such an entity is egregore.

Taking things from a mom & pop store would directly harm the livelihood of actual human beings, who have will and consciousness. That is simply not the case with Wal-Mart, or Target, or Dollar General. These companies make billions of dollars in profit, most of which goes into the pockets of a handful of corporate executives who are already wealthy. If I could do so with impunity, I would take absolutely everything I ever wanted or needed from Wal-Mart—or any other chain store—without paying for any of it.

You know, sort of like European invaders did to Turtle Island.

That I refrain from shoplifting is not a moral stance at all, but a practical one based on fear of legal punishment. Also, my finances are solid enough that I don’t need to take stuff from the machine gods without paying; unlike many people in this country, I can afford the basics of life. There’s no good reason for me to risk a larceny case. But if my situation were to change, I certainly wouldn’t feel any pangs of fucking guilt for helping myself to the shit at Wal-Mart.

And so, my brother’s attempt to trap me with his simplistic, pseudo-Christian moral conundrum failed utterly. After wearing out his cop-mind for a few minutes trying to find an angle from whence to undermine my argument, he finally landed on this: Well, where does the transition happen between a mom & pop store and Wal-Mart?

He really thought he got me with that one, but it’s clearly absurd; once it’s possible to purchase shares of a company on the stock market, we’re pretty well into machine god territory. Although technically they are both corporations, a tremendous gulf separates my local corner store from Wal-Mart. It’s like comparing a marble to Jupiter.

***

I would argue that the state, with its penchant not only for reproducing itself, but also for manufacturing humans who require a state, is also a form of artificial intelligence.

***

Since the industrial revolution, or at least since the advent of advertising and P.R. firms, every time some fancy new technology comes around there are always True Believers—the people who can’t wait to tell you How Much Better Life Will Be Now. This fable is still popular after two centuries of revealing itself as a lie—the most significant accomplishments of most new technology are: killing more of the planet, impoverishing the working class, and consolidating wealth & control.

If you were connected to the last smoldering remnants of the counterculture in the mid ‘90s, then you might remember how everyone was convinced that the internet was going to Liberate Democracy or whatever. Anyone who’d studied Marx for two seconds should have easily predicted that the ability to buy everything online was just going to put a lot of moms & pops out of business. But could they have predicted QAnon? Hmm…

A few of the early dick-riders of cybertech, like Douglas Rushkoff, have repented of their foolish technophilia… now that it’s too late. Who knows what world we might now live in if liberals and leftists would have immediately recognized the internet as a force of evil? Actually, nevermind; they probably couldn’t have stopped it. By that point the beast was coming whether we wanted it or not.

However, I do not believe that our techno-dystopia was historically inevitable.

Back in May, author Thomas Knapp made a statement in a piece for Counterpunch that I feel is worth quoting at length before I carve it up with the Wu Tang sword:

We’ve been hurtling toward the “singularity” for at least 3.3 million years, ever since one of our ancestor hominins (probably Australopithecus or Kenyanthropus) started using tools to make their work easier.

Over those millions of years, we’ve continuously improved our tools … and our tools have continuously improved us. We’re not really the same animal we were before the automobile, let alone before the wheel. We can do things our grandparents, and those hominins, never dreamed of.

Once we started developing tools that could crack nuts better than us, speak across greater distances than us, travel faster than us, etc., it was inevitable that we’d eventually develop tools which could think better than us.”

With as much respect as is due to anyone who has just insulted their entire species, I have to say this is a gold-medal contender for the stupidest shit I’ve heard all year. I have an appreciation for healthy cynicism, but damn; this kind of Original Sin nonsense chafes my chonies.

First of all, the industrial foundation that made computer tech possible is only a couple of centuries old; go ahead and take a second to boot up your calculator, then divide 200 by 3.3 million and see what kind of ratio you get. I’d hardly describe the speed of that species-journey as “hurtling.” It looks more to me like being healthy for a hundred years, then getting total-body cancer for a fraction of a second before dropping dead.

Second, there was never anything “inevitable” about A.I., the internet, computers, industry, or even civilization. Civilization has only been around for about 5,000 years (divide that by 3.3 million; you’ll get a bigger number but not by much), and as James C. Scott examined in Against the Grain, the earliest hierarchical states were extremely fragile for any number of reasons. There was no guarantee that this way of organizing society would last as long as it has… and it probably won’t last much longer.

The industrial revolution was not the inevitable result of humans being “tool users”—a lot of other species make and use tools—it was the specific product of a specific culture in a specific region under specific circumstances. If the cosmic criminal Christopher Columbus had met a righteous end by drowning at sea before reaching Turtle Island—or, as in the short story I’m currently writing, been murdered by a coalition of time-traveling queers—it’s likely that the industrial revolution would never have happened. That means no capitalism, no planet-devouring corporations, and no motherfucking A.I.

Third, Knapp’s passage is really just a re-framing of the European “Enlightenment” myth of Progress™. The idea that factories and Skynet are part of the “natural evolution” of the human species is not only ridiculous, but it’s also a clandestine form of diet white supremacism—if the industrial revolution was a natural part of “our” evolution, and Europeans did it first, then clearly they must be more “advanced” than other people. Ergo, manifest some destiny, etc.

To commit what’s actually an enormous fuck-up and then claim it’s “natural” to the species is a phenomenal level of hubris… hubris that is basic to the social construction of whiteness. I’ve endured this crypto-racist horseshit in some form or another for my entire life, and I’m tired of it. I feel the same way about the “progress” myth that I feel about the Bering Strait Theory and White Jesus—I keep hoping it’ll retire to Debunked Land, but it never does. Since we can’t get rid of it, my only option for spiritual well-being is to mercilessly clown it.

These last few months, there have been a lot of people gnashing their teeth about the Dangers of A.I. Most of these folks have been enthusiastically feeding all of their personal data to tech companies for the last twenty years, and don’t see the relationship between the two things, but nevermind that.

I don’t see that there is any new danger from A.I. that isn’t already inherent in our cybernetic dystopia. Banal and soulless popular culture? Already got that. People relying on computers to do their thinking for them? Been common for years. Machines taking people’s jobs, or murdering them? Check. Planetary extinction? Well on our way. The “singularity” is just a secular repackaging of Judgment Day. It’s all hype.

That said, is resistance even possible?

I believe resistance is always possible… but only if you understand the threat. Over the years I’ve studied many social movements, particularly the more radical ones—labor rights, religious rebellions, anarchist insurrections, Black Power, Indigenous sovereignty, etc. One of the things all these movements have in common is that they grew from a world in which there was still such a thing as communities.

Many of the Black Panthers were organizing with neighbors whose families they’d known for two or three generations, sometimes longer. When was the last time you were in a neighborhood where everyone had known each other for that long? Gentrification is a helluva drug.

The gospels of Marxism and anarchism were spread in cafes. Nowadays, I’m ready to shed tears when I see strangers so much as strike up a conversation with each other at a cafe. Most people prefer interacting with a screen.

Our current state of hyper-alienation and total cybernetic mediation has effectively destroyed our communal relationships. Nobody like Malcolm X or Fred Hampton could ever have emerged from the world of smartphones and zuckerbook. Tech is the problem, and has been for a long time… yet people act like uncensored access to Twitter is the key to a functioning democracy.

What is to be done?

I don’t know. But I have an extra sledgehammer if you wanna play Luddite with me.

Malik Diamond is a hip hop artist, cartoonist, author, educator, and martial arts instructor. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is the descendant of kidnapped Africans, conquered Natives, and rural laborers of the Scots-Irish, Swiss, and German varieties. He currently lives in Oakland, California, with two brown humans and a white cat. E-mail: malikdiamond (at) hotmail (dot) com

Social activists may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century due to concerns about their impact on communities and social structures, and may resist new technologies as part of broader social movements.

Eco-anarchists and other social activists may oppose new technologies due to concerns about the environment and social justice, viewing the techno-industrial system as a threat to life on earth.

Title:

Content: Aspiring Right-Wing Terrorists Are Targeting The Power Grid Amid Rise In Accelerationist Extremism

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The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the anonymous writers paint a picture of “an anti-tech revolution, beginning with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid.”

“The horrific effects of a nationwide blackout cannot be understated. Hospitals would fail. … Financial collapse,” the magazine reads, continuing to detail traffic chaos, dwindling supplies of clean water and spreading disease before concluding that a successful attack targeting key points on the electrical grid would lead to “the collapse of the system … chaos, agony, and death”

The magazine was obtained by TPM in a chat group on the encrypted app Telegram dedicated to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Along with the breathless depiction of a widespread blackout, it included a precise list of the locations of “THE MOST CRITICALLY IMPORTANT ELECTRIC SUBSTATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.”

This apocalyptic brand of extremist rhetoric — and the focus, specifically, on targeting substations — is part of a growing phenomenon that has captured the attention of both the far right and law enforcement. The trend has resulted in a dramatic rise in attacks that have left tens of thousands of people without power. Experts have attributed the wave to the digital spread of right-wing accelerationist ideology, which aims to hasten societal collapse, and materials like this magazine that encourage and provide instructions for targeting the grid.

Participants in the Telegram chat where TPM obtained the magazine shared it on multiple occasions, along with Kaczynski’s writings, details on how he made his “boom packages,” bomb making manuals and plans to build homemade, untraceable “ghost guns.” They also hurled racial slurs and anti-gay rhetoric while talking about plans for staging attacks.

“I think you guys should start writing some manifesto papers but keep them hidden so no one will find them,” wrote one member of the chat in August 2022. “Then one day if you unexpectedly die, there will be some papers on what you believed in.”

A few days later, the member, whose avatar featured a glaring bald eagle, posted an even more specific vision naming a major provider of abortion care and reproductive health services.

“If I were to do something (If society doesn’t start changing i might) I will take my time and plan carefully,” they wrote, adding, “There is a planned parenthood not too far away.”

Due to the inflammatory and potentially dangerous nature of the content, TPM is not naming the magazine, the alias of its writers, or the chat group in which we obtained it. One of the members who posted the magazine said it had been “removed” from other sites and “marked as terrorism.” They noted that it “contains the addresses of those substations and how to deal with them” and encouraged other members of the chat to “download” it or keep it “somewhere you can access it.”

CASCADING FAILURE

It is easy to dismiss these writings as digital bluster, but law enforcement and academic experts have repeatedly attributed the frightening online rhetoric to the real-world rise in assaults on power stations. And data indicates white supremacists are the driving force behind the uptick in these dangerous attacks.

The electric grid has increasingly come into the crosshairs of extremists and other criminals since an April 2013 sniper attack on a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in Metcalf, California. That attack was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred,” according to Jon Wellinghoff, who headed the nation’s top utility regulator at the time.

At least one gunman came to the remote Metcalf substation after midnight, authorities have said. The individual or individuals avoided security cameras, cut telecommunication cables, and fired over 120 rounds that took out 17 large transformers at the facility, which provides electricity to Silicon Valley.

Despite the damage and the sophistication of the operation, which the Los Angeles Times described as a “military-style raid,” it did not result in any major blackout. Officials were able to reroute power around the site. The lack of disruption after Metcalf underscores how difficult it is to pull off the wild scenarios that online enthusiasts envision when they discuss these attacks.

However, while it didn’t shut off the lights, the Metcalf incident has been cited as an inspiration for similar incidents that followed — some of which caused greater disruption. Experts have described Metcalf as a “wake up call” and a “dress rehearsal,” though the motivations behind the attack remain mysterious. In 2015, a DHS official told CNN they had “some indication” an “insider” at the facility was involved. The FBI later suggested it believed the Metcalf attack was staged by a disgruntled employee and that it was not connected to terrorism. No suspects have been identified.

“We can confirm the Metcalf power substation incident remains under investigation,” an FBI spokesperson told TPM. “No additional information can be provided at this time.”

Since 2013, the idea of shooting attacks on the power grid has gained traction online.

“From our standpoint, what has shifted in the last ten years since Metcalf is the awareness of the tactic and the attention that has gotten,” a Department of Homeland Security official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of their work, told TPM.

“In the publicly available forums we can see tactics and references to the previous, successful incidents getting discussion, diagrams being passed,” the official said. “It’s all happening kind of in the overt space.”

The proliferation of extremist materials online is one of several reasons these attacks present a challenge for law enforcement. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are over 79,000 substations that play a vital part in the nation’s electrical grid. Many are in remote locations and are privately owned, which means they have varying standards for security. DHS is trying to address the issue by gathering intelligence in the open web to produce bulletins and informational materials and by making security recommendations to the private companies that own much of the electrical grid.

According to multiple officials, DHS has done over 1,200 security assessments within the electricity subsector, including 24 visits to facilities in the last month alone.

RAGING AGAINST THE ‘ANTI-WHITE SYSTEM’

While there are myriad risks to power stations, relatively simple shooting attacks from far-right white supremacist terrorists have emerged as a major threat to the grid. Thirteen individuals associated with the white supremacist movement faced federal charges related to “planning attacks on the energy sector” between 2016 and 2022, according to a report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism that was released last September. And those numbers are growing — 11 of the 13 cases cited in the report came after 2020. This far-right fixation on power stations comes as there is a consensus among federal law enforcement agencies that white supremacists have become the top domestic terror threat.

DHS does not have a definitive figure for the number of attacks on substations since they only track incidents with a clear ideological component. However, in just the past six months, there have been multiple new, notable attacks — and one major plot — to take down power stations. Not all of these incidents are politically motivated. After one of these attacks, which took place in Washington State in December and left thousands of people without power, authorities arrested two men who they said hoped to use the blackout as cover to commit a burglary. But other plots show how the idea of taking down the electric grid appeals to the far right, particularly adherents of the violent end times philosophy known as “accelerationism.”

In February, the FBI announced that it had arrested a duo, Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel, and charged them “with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility.” According to an affidavit filed by the FBI in support of the criminal complaint, Russell and Clendaniel allegedly corresponded with a confidential informant and worked on a plan to take out five power stations in the Baltimore area with rifles. The FBI affidavit suggested Russell and Clendaniel were in a romantic relationship. Photos obtained by the FBI showed Clendaniel in tactical gear decorated with a swastika.

Based on encrypted chats quoted in the affidavit, Russell and Clendaniel allegedly intended for  attacks on multiple power stations to spark a cascading failure that would lead to a widespread outage. That type of catastrophe is the dream scenario for accelerationists.

In exchanges that took place during September 2022, Russell allegedly provided the informant “a white supremacist publication that provided instructions on how to attack critical infrastructure” and encouraged them to “use Mylar balloons to short out a power transformer.” The next month Russell again urged the informant to target a substation.

“Putting holes in transformers though is the greatest thing somebody can do,” Russell allegedly wrote.

Russell has a troubled history in the neo-Nazi movement. In May 2017, he lived with three roommates in Tampa, Florida. The four men had started a local chapter of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division with Russell as their leader. One of the roommates, Devon Arthurs, eventually left the group and murdered two of the others. Russell, who was not home during the crime, was arrested when he was found to be in possession of explosive materials during the murder investigation. Arthurs later claimed that his roommates were plotting to attack critical infrastructure, including power lines.

Atomwaffen, which rebranded as National Socialist Order in mid-2020 as it faced investigations in multiple countries, is perhaps the best-known modern white supremacist accelerationist group. In general, accelerationism is an ideology that believes modern society is evil and encourages acts that would bring it downl. Many white supremacist accelerationists expect this cataclysm to come through a race war.

“Accelerationists believe that there is nothing redeemable about contemporary society,” said Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

The power grid is a natural target for white supremacist accelerationists, who view it as the backbone of “the anti-white system,” Hayden said.

“Thinking about how the power lines function in that context, this is the central nervous system of contemporary society, and that’s why it’s so important to accelerationists in particular,” Hayden said. “As they see it … the system that is oppressing them cannot function … without power.”

White supremacists are not the only adherents of accelerationism. There are anarchists and some on the far left who could be described as accelerationists. Indeed, one of the writers of the magazine that listed locations of substations and described the methodology of the Metcalf attack described themselves as something of an eco-anarchist who rejects all political movements.

“It is our view that the techno-industrialist machine is a violent, destructive, and irreparable system of subjugation, and because of this we do not support any social or political efforts to rehabilitate it,” they wrote. “It is our belief that the techno-industrial system presents an absolute and urgent existential threat to all life on earth. Thus, we are not a partisan movement, nor do we have any interest in furthering the ideologies of any movement on the left-right political spectrum.”

TPM emailed with one of the writers of the magazine. They said the publication was produced by a “small group.” While this writer denounced racism as “fucking stupid” and said they would prefer “militant groups of educated anarchists” to use the magazine, they said they would not necessarily be opposed to working with the far right towards the larger goal of “the destruction of techno-industrial society.”

“It is another unpleasant reality that the far-right is far better armed and has easier access to a lot of the locations listed than the Left or post-Left,” the magazine writer explained. “If the question then, is whether toward the ultimate goal of rapid global deindustrialization, I would accept the assistance or ‘alliance’ with any far-right group, I would hesitate to say no. I would much rather turn the lights out and then fight them in the quiet dark afterwards.”

The DHS official who spoke to TPM explained that they see accelerationism coming in “different ideological bins”

“We’ve seen discussions across the spectrum,” the official said, explaining that foreign terror organizations, anti-government activists, and what the DHS has termed “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVEs) are all drawn to the idea that taking down the power grid could cause the “downfall of society.”

The term RMVE can encompass other racial identity movements. However, in recent years, data has shown that white supremacists are far more active than other racially motivated groups when it comes to domestic terrorism.

Hayden, who has researched and written extensively about the far-right accelerationists,  agreed that white supremacist accelerationists have proven to be the most capable of doing real-world damage.

“Accelerationism is not exclusively a white supremacist ideology. We refer to that specifically as white power accelerationism,” Hayden explained. “There are people who believe that, like, we need a fall of society in order to build a communist utopia and things like that. I just don’t know to what degree they’re organized in the same way.”

INSIDE ‘TERRORGRAM’

Accelerationism is not a new idea. The DHS official noted the concept has existed “for decades.” However, the official said the availability of tools like Telegram has been crucial to its recent growth and to the dissemination of ideological material and instructions for violent attacks.

As an example, the official pointed to “The Turner Diaries,” the 1978 book authored by neo-Nazi William Pierce that inspired multiple terrorists, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

“When you’re talking about ‘The Turner Diaries’ or something 20, 25 years ago, someone had to go out and actually buy the book,” the official said. “Right now, everyone can get on there and pass stuff around.”

McVeigh is one of several terrorists who are venerated as “saints” on “Terrorgram,” the name both researchers and extremists have embraced to describe the more extreme and violent corners of the Telegram app. Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” is another “Terrorgram” icon, who is often referred to as “Uncle Ted” by his fans on the app.

The magazine that detailed methods for targeting substations and identified potential targets features a smiling portrait of Kaczynski in prison. After listing off the locations of various substations, the magazine concluded with an ominous accelerationist poem of sorts:

“we will be free.

we will find peace.

we will have our revenge.”

Telegram, which was created by a Russian tech billionaire whose libertarian attitude towards free speech led him to clash with the Kremlin and flee the country in 2014, is encrypted and largely unmoderated. As a result, it has become a haven for the far right and for discussion of terrorist activity.

Hayden described Telegram as “sort of a free for all” and said many far-right extremists had made a “huge migration” there after losing access to more mainstream social media networks in 2019 and 2020.

“It has really become the home base for anything that is against society, outside of society, and so extreme that it is criminal,” Hayden said of Telegram.

Spokespeople for Telegram did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

A recent spate of incidents in North Carolina demonstrated both the persistent threats to the grid and the way neo Nazi online accelerationists are excited by the idea of attacks on power stations.

On Dec. 3, 2022, there was a high-powered rifle attack on a pair of power stations in Moore County, North Carolina that caused 45,000 people to lose power, some for days.

While investigators have not identified a suspect or motive, the incident coincided with a drag show in the county that had drawn death threats and far-right protests. Days after the attack, CNN reported that law enforcement was investigating links to extremist writing online that encouraged targeting the power grid and the recent rise in threats and armed protests against the LGBTQ community and drag shows in particular.

A spokesperson for the Charlotte, North Carolina field office of the FBI, which is investigating the attack with the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, told TPM aprobe into the incident is “ongoing.”

“It would be fair to say we are looking at any investigative leads or tips,” the FBI spokesperson said.

While the DHS official who spoke to TPM stressed that law enforcement has not identified a link between the drag show and the power station attack, they noted white supremacists have also targeted the gay community.

“I don’t have any information on the motivation of the actors in Moore. I think that’s still being investigated, which is part of the challenge here,” the DHS official said, adding, “I think, intuitively, one of the things we see with racially, ethnically motivated violence here, strictly on the what we call white supremacist side, is they have a very structured view of how the kind of ideal society should be. Certainly we’ve seen the LGBTQ community be an enduring target of people with that ideology based on their perception of how they are corrupting their ideal of a white society.”

Hayden, the SPLC investigator, said anti-LGBTQ extremism has had a “unifying” effect on the right of late. He suggested this is due to the fact it is increasingly a focus of more mainstream conservative politicians and because, after extensive backlash to racism in recent years, the fringe has seen it as a topic where they can gain “a little bit of ground.”

“Things around gender and sexuality right now … are animating extremists on the right more than race,” Hayden said. “That reverberates from the White House when Trump was there all the way down to these accelerationist cells.”

After the Moore County blackout, North Carolina continued to be a flashpoint. On Dec. 18, 2022, just 15 days after the attack, a banner was unfurled on a highway in a town just to the east of the two power stations. The banner advertised a chat room on the encrypted chat app Telegram. A local news station, WGHP, reported that the chat room contained graphics showing slogans “superimposed over a picture of what appears to be an electrical substation.”

Major Andy Conway of the Moore County Sheriff’s Department told TPM they are investigating possible links between the threats to the drag show and the power station attack as well as links between the incident and the banner drop. No suspects have been identified.

“We have not excluded anything at this point,” Conway said in a phone call on Wednesday afternoon. “I can’t say that they are linked, but I can’t say that they are not either. … We have multiple agencies working on this, so it’s quite the work in progress.”

Along with the Telegram address, the banner that was dropped in the county was festooned with swastikas. It also featured an ominous accelerationist slogan: “BRING IT ALL DOWN”

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Social activists, including anarchists and far-right groups, may be opposed to new technologies in the 21st century as part of their goal to destroy techno-industrial society.

Government initiatives can play a crucial role in addressing resistance to new technologies by facilitating a transition to a low-carbon economy and promoting community engagement.

Title:

Content: Climate change backlash exploited by right-wing deniers shows need to win popular support for green policies – Joyce McMillan

Governments need to be much more serious about the profound political and social transformations required to bring about a low-carbon economy

They call it DARVO, and it works a treat. It’s a term originally used in criminal psychology to describe the behaviour of some wrongdoers when accused. They first deny (D) that they did any such thing, then begin to attack (A) those accusing them; and finally start a process of reversing victim and offender (RVO), in which the perpetrators of crime somehow become victims, and those accusing them are framed as powerful oppressors, backed by dark elite forces.

And if all of that sounds familiar, in the age of Donald Trump, then it’s hardly surprising; because DARVO is not only the continuing leitmotif of Trump’s narcissistic personality, but also, increasingly. the chosen modus operandi of the global political right, which has had an iron grip on global economic policy for more than a generation, and is now – as Liz Truss’s bizarre speech at the recent CPAC conference in Maryland vividly demonstrated – in profound and aggressive denial about the human, environmental and economic damage those policies have inflicted.

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As I write, there are three arenas where this right-wing hegemony and the attitudes it spawns are being challenged, or exposed for what they are. There is Ukraine, where the armed forces are trying to defend some kind of European liberal democracy against the brutal aggression of an oil-fuelled Russian Federation. There is Gaza, and the horrific slaughter and destruction now being wrought there by a far-right Israeli government.

And there are the city streets, in the West and beyond, where people of all races and creeds have turned out in millions to march for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza/Israel conflict; and where mainly young climate activists try to find ways of expressing their horror at the “business as usual” complacency that is destroying the natural world on which we all depend, sometimes even halting the sacred motor car in its tracks.

Not, though, for much longer, if governments like the current Westminster administration have their way; because now, political DARVO is in full swing on all of these issues, with assorted politicians – including, sadly, Britain’s Prime Minister – conspiring to smear millions who have marched peacefully for a ceasefire in Gaza as in some way linked to political violence, and to dangerous threats against politicians. In an inflammatory and frankly ridiculous speech on Wednesday, Mr Sunak even claimed – without a shred of evidence, and despite a sceptical response from senior police officers – that there was now a “growing consensus” that Britain is “descending into mob rule”; a development which would, of course, necessitate further repressive measures against all kinds of protest.

Russian propaganda

The effects of DARVO are now becoming particularly heartbreaking and terrifying, though, for those who care about the future of the planet on which our lives depend. Across Europe and beyond, policies designed to meet the challenge of climate change – and those who support them – have now become one of the main “culture war” targets of the political right, ranging from the “Net Zero Research” group within the parliamentary Tory party to the Russian bots using online propaganda to persuade Polish farmers angered by falling global prices that their real enemies are the Ukrainian people, and EU environmental policies.

In the age of the internet, it would be naive to imagine that the farmers who have come out to protest in other European capitals recently are not also seeing the same online ideas and memes, all suggesting a top-down green conspiracy by governments against farmers and food production. This week the PM – abruptly losing his aversion to disruptive street protests, when they serve this side of the argument – even turned out in Cardiff to back Welsh farmers protesting against Welsh government green policy proposals which they say will break them; although perhaps, as it turns out, not quite as much as Westminster policies will break farmers in England.

In the case of climate change policy – and the vital issue of food security – these political movements should act as a double wake-up call to administrations seeking to deal with 21st-century realities. First, those governments should never underestimate the sheer financial and political might of the forces still trying to defend existing food and energy systems, and how adept some of their political allies have become in using online propaganda and organisation to obstruct change.

Democratic renewal

Then secondly, those governments need to become much more serious about the profound political and social transformations needed to support a transition to a low-carbon economy. To put it bluntly, no such transition will be achieved unless communities at the grass roots feel a strong sense of ownership of the policies involved, and are motivated to implement them in full; and that is as true in Scotland as anywhere, where numerous well-intentioned and necessary green measures have been applied in such a top-down manner, with so little buy-in from key stakeholders, that they have become nothing more than political footballs, and in some cases ramps for the worst kinds of anti-green propaganda and outright climate change denial.

The resistance to climate-related policies, in other words, represents not only a massive political opportunity for those who oppose all progressive change, but also a profound challenge to Western and other governments who imagine that change on this scale can be achieved through 1990s-style methods of top-down management, imposed on an apathetic or hostile public. The economic transformation we need to see will go hand in hand with democratic renewal, and with the re-empowerment of local communities, or it will not happen. And far more than the future of any one nation may therefore depend on the skill and wisdom of politicians committed to that viable future, in re-engineering their politics to meet the challenges of the times, and enabling and supporting the new age of citizen empowerment that will be necessary to deliver a liveable future, for us all.

A common reason for opposing new technology is the fear of job loss or negative impact on working conditions, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites.

The fear of job loss is a significant reason for opposing new technology, as it has the potential to replace human workers with automated systems and artificial intelligence.

The fear of job loss is a significant reason for opposing new technology, as it can lead to job displacement and automation.

The fear of job loss is a common reason for opposing new technology, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites and still relevant in the 21st century.

The opposition to new technology in the 21st century can be attributed to the fear of job loss, which is a concept rooted in the idea of 'technological unemployment'. This fear is driven by the uncertainty surrounding the impact of new technological solutions on employment.

The Luddite revolt was actually a labor movement fighting for workers' rights and jobs, rather than being against technology itself.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the use of technology to exploit workers, rather than being against technology itself. This historical context can inform our understanding of modern-day resistance to new technologies.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the introduction of new machines, which they believed were threatening their jobs and transferring wealth from workers to employers. Understanding this historical context can help in addressing concerns about new technologies in the 21st century.

The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the introduction of new machinery, which they believed threatened their jobs. This historical context can help understand the reasons behind resistance to new technologies in the 21st century.

"The Luddite revolt was a labor movement that fought against the replacement of human labor with machines, and the lack of consideration for workers' well-being. This historical context can help understand the reasons behind the resistance to new technologies in the 21st century, including concerns about job security and the pace of change."

21st century Luddites fear a technocratic society where technology exploits and controls humanity, rather than serving it, as evident from the passage's description of a world where technology has failed to address major problems and the commentary on the excesses of a society reliant on digital entertainment.

Title:

Content: Blog post

We cannot buy tomorrow — using stories to understand technology change

By Mark P. McDonald | December 03, 2021 | 0 Comments

tech NO logyPersonal ObservationHuman AbilityFuture of High TechDigital Society

The dynamic and accelerating rate of change, disruption, societal concerns, etc can make it difficult to see what it all means, the direction we are heading in.  Speculative fiction is one of the ways that people try to make sense out of what can appear to be senseless.  Gartner instituted a special project called “Stories from Planet B“.  The goal was to use stories and other artifacts to help stakeholders envision preferred and plausible futures in a way that is transformative, inspiring and disrupting.

Here is my story, you can find the others at “Stories from Planet B” on Gartner.com

Enjoy

Mark

YOU CANNOT BUY TOMORROW

Tara sat down, rubbing her leg to work out a cramp she had picked up on the walk from her house. She had delayed this to the last minute. “Can’t turn ten ‘till you talk to the old men,” her brother reminded her.

Tara cleared her throat. “Question: What was it like at the start?“

Response: Project 2207, Darius Senna, aged 105, recalling the founding of Pantos.

The front of the room darkened. “Tara. The name means star,” came a man’s voice from the darkness.

“Dad says it’s also a lubricant that has gone bad, ‘Tar — ahh!’”  The room got even darker.

“We call ourselves Pantos. The fifth wave of Planet B colonists, B5, like the vitamin,” the man’s voice continued.

Darius Senna walked out of the darkness. He was wearing a blue collarless shirt rolled up at the sleeves, dark pants and brown boots. Tara noticed his rough hands, and his face, lined from UV rays. A bench appeared. He sat down.

“We were not the first. The first were the explorers. They discovered Planet B, determined it could support life, and summoned us to our new home. Then came ships, filled with those who could afford to leave Earth behind.”

Senna leaned back. Tara noticed the old style comms implant on his wrist. “Six centuries ago, the English sent ships carrying goldsmiths, jewelers, governors and soldiers to Jamestown. They sought to civilize their ‘new world.’ Likewise, the first ships to Planet B carried engineers bankers, officials — the cream of a curdled civilization.”

Looking out the window, Darius continued: “Those first ships were technological marvels. Gossamer solar sails, filled with technology and terraforming equipment. They landed in the northern hemisphere of Planet B. When their technology failed, they starved, just like the colonists at Jamestown.”

He paused and looked at Tara. “After three more waves, some of them are still around, eating from waste regenerators, asking their tech why it doesn’t work. We don’t see them much. We think about them even less.” Darius leaned forward, clasping his hands, just like Tara’s father did when making a point. “We Pantos understand — the physical world feeds the digital world. When the physical does not work, the digital does not matter.”

“Old Earth technology changed in the early 21st century. It turned inward. It became obsessed with experience, entertainment and consumption.” His face hardened. “Before then, technology had made people’s lives better. Then society went digital, and consumption mattered more.”

Darius unclasped his hands. “Data replaced reason. People focused on themselves. Technology meant looking down at a screen, not up at the world around them. People thought it was wonderful. Screens made them feel better.”

He leaned back. Tara noticed the scar down the inside of his left arm. No one had scars anymore, not since the invention of Dermaplast. Darius saw her staring and, almost under his breath, said: “With their narrow datasets, myopic algorithms and self-centered beliefs, they couldn’t see what was really coming. And they never did.”

“I had just turned twenty-seven,” Darius said. He paused, lost in a memory.

He resumed, “We Pantos are not Luddites. We are some of the finest innovators and engineers humanity has ever known. Old Earth technologies were advanced, but consumptive. They were great for solving little problems. Distributing products instantaneously, keeping their users’ attention, showing each other how successful they were.”

“But when the big problems came, technology could not handle it. The heat, the drought, the pandemics, the inequalities, the authoritarian states. This was the world as it really was, not how it appeared online. Their technologies spent what resources they had, but could not create more. When their inherited wealth dried up, it all fell apart.”

“You know why we Pantos tell each other, ‘You can’t buy …”

“… Tomorrow,” Tara finished. She heard that at least ten times a month.

“Right,” Darius replied. “We say that when it’s time to get to work.”

“The ‘northerners’ brought Earth’s ethos of control and exploitation. Digital entertainment, not physical engagement. They binged on culture as they starved and froze to death. If you go up north you can see the graves of trillionaires, and screens looping videos demonstrating their importance.” Darius went silent.

Tara waited, unsure of what to do next. “If we are not the first, then when did we get here?”

Darius looked Tara directly in the face. “We came in the last wave. We came on outdated ships driven by ions. The ships were cannibalized once we landed on the southern hemisphere, far from the first four failures.”

He smiled, “The first waves came to Planet B in space limos. Pantos came in space beaters.”

“Pantos went to work. Our technology fits our hands, not our eyes. We built our homes, rather than having them printed. Building them ourselves proved we were here to stay. Doing things yourself teaches you the true costs and benefits of your actions.”

He paused for a moment, and said: “Tara, remember to feed the Briax when you get home.”

She knew. Doing builds ownership and responsibility; consuming builds nothing but your waistline.

Darius resumed: “Technology is part of our agency. Planet B sustains life, but we are building a world to ensure our minds stay broad; we think before we act. We make mistakes, like we did at Junction.”

He rubbed the inside of his left arm.

“Failure is acceptable when we learn from it. Unacceptable when it is a cost of doing business, or called an externality.”

“We stay strong, acknowledging challenges and celebrating progress. Technology encourages contribution, not consumption. Contribution brings meaning. Meaning motivates innovation and improvement. If it does not work for all of us, then it does not work well enough for any of us. We have much work to do. You know…”

“You can’t buy tomorrow,” Tara repeated, reflexively.

The room brightened. Senna was gone, as was the bench. A woman’s voice spoke up. “Congratulations, Tara. Welcome to your next decade.”

Tara stood up. As she was leaving, she thought she heard the woman say: “Another turning ten. A blessing.”

“Yes,” came Senna’s reply. “Old enough to understand, and young enough to care.”

"Economic crises can contribute to fear and resistance to change, as seen in the example of Germany's economic crisis turning into a political one, highlighting the potential for economic uncertainty to drive opposition to new technologies or ways of working."

Title:

Content: Archive | Countries | Persons | Catalog | News | Discussions | Jokes | Contacts | PDA
| Central Asia | Afghanistan | Kazakhstan | Kyrgyzstan | Tajikistan | Turkmenistan | Uzbekistan |
News & Events
|
Monday, 29.01.2024
19: 12 Against the protesting French farmers brought armored vehicles
The United States was in the state of the USSR on the eve of its collapse, - Jackson Diannie
19: 03 What role in the fate of Kazakhstan give Napoleon lovers of alternative history
18: 58 Texas destroys US to save its economy, - S. Savchuk
How much does Almaty cost, and whether Kazakhstan will be able to restore the city after a devastating earthquake
18: 12 Is it demolished or stored?
What monuments Tajikistan has lost in recent years
17: 49 22 kazakhstan airports want to be transferred to the management of European "investors".
Smells like a wild scam
17: 35 The new Prime Minister of Georgia will be Irakli Kobakhidze.
Instead of Irakli Garibashvili
17: 31 Russia takes away another "gold" of the Beijing Olympics - team skaters
16: 18 Putin refused to participate in the election debate.
There are no words...
14: 52 Underwater tankers will carry oil and gas in the Arctic
14: 50 Critical mass: the United States worried about Russian uranium
Chinese archaeologists have found in Xinjiang Parking man 50 thousand years ago
Fox News: the US army recognized as incapable of protecting national interests
14: 04 What do British emissaries do in Central Asia
14: 00 "Children were thin, with thin necks" - how Kyrgyzstanis helped besieged Leningrad
1: 58 in the forehead.
Avdiivka ’ s assault continues
13: 33 Emomali Rahmon again urged to stock up on food.
Because of climate change
13: 29 Dancing by the fire: How Tajiks celebrate their ancient festival of the Garden
13: 21 How will the presidential election in Russia affect Kazakhstan?
13: 13 "The Republic of Texas."
Will this state become the leader of the new confederation of the United States - E. Murzina
13: 09 The Last of the Mohicans
Congress of Mongush tribe held in Bishkek
13: 06 "This war is completely unusual..." - Dmitry Rogozin
1: 02 is green.
For the birthday of the "visionary", - Rostislav Ishchenko
12: 59 Three trump cards of Russia in the war in the Middle East, - Hoda al-Husseini
11: 24 Why Kazakh officials force domestic food producers to transfer production to Uzbekistan
11: 19 Angry French besieged Paris
11: 04 Matlubakhon Sattorien - the new ministress of Tajik culture
10: 50 Kazakh-language resource raised the issue of claims to Orenburg and Astrakhan - "Vzglyad"
08: 44 The Houthis hit the US Navy ’ s Lewis B. Puller with a missile.
06: 39 Moldova will be left without money from Russia, - S. Gamova
The star of captivating Texas: the split in the United States is aggravated, - Gennady Simakov
US abandons its previous strategy towards Iran, - Igor Subbotin
China does not want to quarrel with Iran, - Vladimir Skosyrev
00: 19 Apocalypse today: the freaks have taken over the world, - Platon Besedin
00: 10 West prepares Moldova for seizure of Transnistria, - G.Mirzayan
00: 07 Vandalism, pogroms and enemy neighbors.
The project of "Great India" is gaining momentum, - L. Savin
Sunday, 28.01.2024
23: 47 The national team of Tajikistan sensationally reached the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup
23: 15 What is written on the flag of Hezbollah, - P. Gusterin
20: 55 An unknown drone struck an American soldier in Jordan: 3 "cargo 200" and 25 - "cargo 300"
20: 28 How the economic crisis in Germany turns into a political one - Oleg Nikiforov
18: 46 Death Knot in Latin America.
Crime as a Child of Neoliberalism - S.Kozhemyakin
18: 45 Trump predicted the collapse of the United States because of the crisis at the border
18: 42 Prime Minister of Mongolia announced the delay in negotiations on the "Power of Siberia - 2"
16: 56 British media accuse Russian drone of trying to disrupt the coronation of Charles III
16: 07 Russian Dmitry Medvedev is offended by the final of the tennis Australian Open
16: 03 The Russian Air Force finally began to bomb the Kremenchug refinery, from which the bander-army is refueled and Tatneft is fed.
15: 59 Mingnidkult.
Filmmaker Lokshin, who poured mud on Russia, received huge money from the Russian budget
15: 18 The last commander of the regiment of the Second World War, Major-General Alexander Khomenko, died
11: 32 In Tajikistan, 550 industrial enterprises do not work
10: 41 Rahmon replaces the head of the APC and heads of districts of GBAO
Archive
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CenterAsia |
The United States was in the state of the USSR on the eve of its collapse, - Jackson Diannie
19: 04 29.01.2024
Salon
USA
Did America become like the Soviet Union in 1990?
Sometimes it seems that it is.
Salon: the US was in the state of the USSR on the eve of its collapse
In the United States, the era of confidence in the future has passed, the system is falling apart, but no one can offer a viable alternative, writes Salon.
Decline begins to be perceived as the norm – America is sliding to the state of the late USSR on the eve of its collapse.
The symptoms of decline are everywhere in America – and history shows us what can happen if we don ’ t change course.
Question: Who owns parking lots in Chicago?
Answer: Conglomerate Morgan Stanley and the city of Abu Dhabi.
In 2008, to alleviate the budget crisis, the city council leased the parking meter system to Morgan Stanley ’ s Chicago Parking Meters and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Parking prices have quadrupled in most areas.
In June 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that Nestlé could use child slaves in the chocolate production process in Africa.
Six people from Mali said they were sold as children to Ivory Coast, where they were supposed to harvest cocoa beans, and that Nestlé promoted child slave labor.
However, in its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Nestlé could not be legally held accountable.
In 2022, Human Rights Watch ranked the insulin crisis in the United States as the fifth largest "human rights crisis" in the world - one line above the deaths of migrants between Morocco and Spain.
* * *
The era of confidence in tomorrow has passed.
The current era is determined by the growth of instability and unexplained events in the world.
Britain's decision to leave the European Union.
The election (and possible re-election) of Donald Trump.
Attempts at coups d'état in the United States, Russia and Germany: The first global pandemic in a century.
In the face of all this, it is difficult to shake off the feeling that our current system has ceased to be functional.In America and other Western countries, people are massively gripped by uncertainty about the future, spurred by a number of disturbing trends.
Currently, the United States is the only country in the developed world where life expectancy is declining.
This is partly due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in fact this trend originated a few years before it.From 2014 to 2017, life expectancy declined for three years in a row - in the United States, this has not happened since 1918, and this is practically not the case in modern societies not facing wars or epidemics. is now at its lowest level since 1996.
The COVID pandemic nullified two full decades of rising life expectancy in America, while in other developed countries, life expectancy declined only marginally, to around 2018 levels.
Why is this happening in the richest country in the world?
The reasons are not such a mystery.
In large part, this is due to the growing number of so-called “deaths from despair ” (mostly suicides and deaths related to alcohol or drugs), which have become increasingly common among middle-class white Americans and workers.
The term was coined by Princeton scientists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who suggest that this phenomenon is associated with economic inequality and inadequate health care.
In 2017, there were 150,000 “deaths from despair ” in the United States.
The country now appears to be experiencing the worst drug addiction epidemic in its history.
Drug overdoses are now on the list of leading causes of death, along with car crashes and firearms crimes, and in 2022 the number of suicides reached a record level.
Last year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published a newsletter on the rise of loneliness in America, declaring it a public health crisis.
According to Murty, the impact of social disunity on mortality in the country is similar to the impact of smoking one pack of cigarettes a day.
In 2018, the British government created the unofficial position of “Minister of Solitude ”.
Japan did the same in 2021 — largely in response to the hikikomori phenomenon, which is a severe form of social isolation in which young people stay in their rooms for six months or more.
According to some estimates, more than half a million Japanese men have become hikikomori by now.
Although the Biden administration has increased infrastructure spending, the American Society of Civil Engineers still puts U.S. infrastructure at "C-minus," which is practically the lowest estimate.
America has a higher level of wealth inequality than almost all other developed countries, and it is the only major developed country that does not guarantee health care to all its citizens.
The listed symptoms of decline did not arise from an empty place.
We have been following this course for decades.
Today, according to a number of international indices, America is already considered a “developing country ” .Our state is not fatal, but we are still moving in the wrong direction.
The general health of our people is deteriorating, and it is quite possible that we are already approaching a major upheaval on the scale of the collapse of communism in the 1990s.
No one can predict the future with certainty.
But what is most striking at the moment is that the most serious threat to America ’ s current public order is not some more effective alternative model promoted by our adversaries.
In the 1970s, power gradually began to shift from the production sector to the hands of financial institutions, resulting in a new economic reality that was no longer organized around the means of production and distribution.
At about the same time, we witnessed a sharp decline in the number of trade union members and collective bargaining.
Financial regulation is a thing of the past.
Wages stopped rising.
After the collapse of Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s Democratic Coalition and his New Deal, politicians from both parties failed to envision or implement anything that looked like sweeping economic reforms — even after the 2008 crash, which turned out to be the worst shock since the Great Depression.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Republicans took advantage of the backlash against the Civil Rights Act by putting forward their "southern strategy," which allowed them to lure white Democratic voters from the southern states.
They also mobilized evangelical Christians in support of the abortion ban.
This has directly led to today's split, which focuses on "cultural warfare" issues such as race, gender and gender.
Republicans lost seven of the last eight presidential elections, but they managed to hold power almost half of the time - a kind of sabotage of the minority.
Today, the ideal of national unity seems increasingly shaky.
Mitch McConnell: “We cannot continue to divide into two separate tribes with different sets of facts and different realities, which have nothing in common except our hostility to each other and distrust of the few national institutions we still have. ”
The days when the public could discuss common realities are over.
In America today, the media is becoming increasingly fragmented, and this is not much different from the situation in countries torn by civil war, where information has to be collected in pieces from conflicting reports coming from sources loyal to the opposing oligarchies.
Previously, there was a kind of monoculture in the American media, in which people reacted equally to the same set of basic facts.
Of course, this state of affairs had its drawbacks, but today there is no consensus reality at all.
The Internet allowed to "democratize" information, but sharply reduced its quality.Opposing worldviews were isolated inside bubbles, where other points of view and doubts can not penetrate.
America is actually splitting into two societies that disagree on almost nothing with each other, except in an attempt to blame everything on the opposite side.
This has helped perpetuate a culture of social fragmentation: people from all demographic groups feel more lonely than ever before, and public trust in government has been at an all-time low for many years.
Recently, we have seen the rise of far-right movements around the world, and far-right leaders are coming to power – at least temporarily – in the United States, Britain, Brazil, Italy, Hungary, Argentina, the Philippines and elsewhere. Corbyn in the British Labour Party ended in defeat.
However, in many Western countries, the political center that once confidently dominated has almost completely lost its position, although Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak may serve as evidence that he has not yet completely outlived his age.
The trend goes far beyond the political arena, and this can be seen as a symptom of a “death drive. ”
Since 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been placing hands on the doomsday clock, demonstrating with this symbol how close the world is to nuclear annihilation.
Midnight is the theoretical point of total annihilation.
Last year, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, scientists set the hands of the clock at 90 seconds to midnight - this is the closest time to Armageddon in the history of the clock.
In March last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its annual synthesis report, which states that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions will lead to “widespread negative impacts on food and water security, human health, the economy and society, as well as the associated loss and damage. ”
In June last year, smoke from wildfires in Canada spread hundreds of kilometers all the way to the east coast of the United States, painting the sky over New York in orange.
July was the hottest month on record.
We should recall what Sigmund Freud called “the fatal question for the whole human race ” in his book Discontent with Culture:
“Fatal for the human race seems to me the question: will it be possible – and to what extent – to curb in the way of culture the attraction to aggression and self-destruction, leading to the destruction of human coexistence.
Now men have come so far in their domination over the forces of nature that with their help they can easily destroy each other down to the last man.
They know this, hence a great deal of their present anxiety, their unhappiness, their anxiety.
It is to be hoped that another of the heavenly powers, the eternal Eros, will exert its strength in order to defend its rights in the fight against an equally immortal enemy. "
In an era when there are more disasters in the world, one is more terrible than the other, it is quite difficult to resist the idea that our society has fallen into a disastrous maelstrom.
We are living through a period of what Alexei Yurchak, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, called “hypernormalization, ” a term he coined to describe life in the Soviet Union during the last years of the communist regime.
He describes the moment when everyone already knows that the system is falling apart, but no one can offer a viable alternative, so the state of decline begins to be perceived as the norm.
Are we in the same position?
In fact, there are alternatives, and opinion polls show that many Americans really want to take them.
Most are in favor of raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes for the rich, creating a national health insurance system, adopting a New Green Deal, and rebuilding public infrastructure.
In this and in many other respects, the gap between what Americans want and what those who ostensibly represent them are willing or able to do is huge - it is simply shocking.
History clearly shows that positive change almost always starts with grassroots movements – think of civil rights movements, women ’ s rights, protests against the Vietnam War, anti-apartheid movements, LGBTQ activists * and so on.
For a variety of reasons, the 21st-century protest movements — from anti-war protests in Iraq to Occupy Wall Street, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the climate justice movement — have not brought about large-scale social and economic change, although to some extent they have contributed to shifts in public consciousness.
I think that in the future we will need to achieve a certain level of sustained street activism, combined with a rigid stance of trade unions and democracy in the workplace – that is, what was observed in America in the 1930s.
We can now see hints of this in the resurgence of trade union influence, although they still represent only a small percentage of American workers.
Such a united movement could gain power outside the government by taking control of key sectors of the economy, with the aim of raising living standards, increasing wages and ensuring equal access to health services.
In the long run, such a movement may even encourage greater participation in public life.
People engaged in common efforts for mutual benefit feel less lonely – because they are not alone – they have a purpose in life and feel stable.
There are two roads ahead of us.
One leads to a future based on citizen engagement and shared vision.
The other is to the Soviet Union in 1991, to a superpower whose collapse no one could have imagined until it happened.
Author: JacksonDiianni
* an extremist organization whose activities are prohibited in Russia
Source - Foreign Media
Permanent address of the article - https: / / centrasia.org / newsA.php? st = 1706544240
News of Kazakhstan
- Speaker of the Senate: Our task is to bring interaction with maslikhats to a new level
- Majilis will consider a bill strengthening control over the withdrawal of capital from the country
- 180 new projects of the manufacturing industry for 1.5 trillion tenge are planned to be launched in Kazakhstan in 2024
- Senate Speaker meets with Vice Chairman of Standing Committee of National People 's Congress
- About Almaty development and ethics
- Alikhan Smailov held a meeting of the Commission on the return of illegally acquired assets
- Meetings of the working sections of the National Kurultai were held
- Transition of Kazakhstan ’ s automotive industry to a new level: Alikhan Smailov visited machine-building enterprises of Kostanay region
Alikhan Smailov discussed prospects of launching a number of new projects in Kazakhstan with foreign investors
- Strengthening cooperation between Kazakhstan and China was discussed by Roman Sklyar and Hao Mingjin
Go to the version with frames
© CentrAsiaTop

Economic crises can lead to fear and resistance to change, as seen in the historical example of workers resisting changes to their working conditions and job security during times of economic hardship.

Title:

Content: Democracy Dies in Darkness

Today’s union-busters are following a centuries-old playbook

Broad solidarity and a willingness to engage in collective action are key to beating back anti-union efforts.

Corporations like Starbucks and Amazon (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post) are desperately trying to stop their workers from unionizing. Both have simply fired organizing workers and closed their stores. Amazon has called in the police to stop organizing activity, while Starbucks has threatened to rescind employee health care coverage. These measures have been supported by misinformation aimed at the public, such as Starbucks’s open letter to the National Labor Relations Board. Union-busters have relied on technology to suppress unions as well. Amazon’s warehouses are structured to minimize interpersonal interaction, with scanners giving workers orders from on high.

These tactics come directly from an anti-union playbook older than unions themselves. Today’s union-busting echoes the efforts of administrators in one of the earliest organized workplaces: Britain’s Royal Dockyards. Anti-union efforts in the dockyards reveal how employers break organized labor: a multifaceted strategy targeting workers, their relationship with each other and their work itself.

Home to thousands of skilled artisans, the Royal Dockyards were remarkably modern production facilities in which workers had surprisingly modern labor rights. By the mid-18th century, Royal Dockyard shipwrights — specialized carpenters who built and repaired ships — had the equivalent of lunch breaks, limited tenure and pensions. Job security and other benefits were invaluable in a period with no organized labor protections. Plus, men within the same trade — shipwrights, caulkers and blacksmiths, for instance — were paid similarly to one another, a marker of an egalitarian culture of work grounded in the collective nature of dockyard labor.

To be sure, the dockyards were not a laborer’s paradise. Wages were regularly months late, work was dangerous and taxing and a stingy Parliament refused to allow for pay increases even when inflation began eroding real wages. Still, the yards were a place where stable multigenerational families could count on a living, backed by traditional rights and defended by the community.

Shipbuilders secured their rights in the dockyard through organizing, backed by the power of artisan tradition and based in close interpersonal ties. Families, friends and neighbors worked closely together to cut timber, build frames and seal hulls. Within the yards, workers had significant control over the means of production, collectively influencing the intensity, hours and structure of their own labor.

When necessary, they engaged in collective action to protect that control. In 1739, when naval officials threatened shipwrights’ access to “chips,” waste wood produced in the construction process that helped supplement workers’ wages, workers at Chatham Dockyard went on strike. They were successful, as were similar strikes over the next decade.

Dockyard administrators were not pleased. In 1749, First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, proposed a plan to crush worker independence and remake the dockyards to emphasize thrift over workers’ rights. Known as “task work,” Sandwich’s scheme divided shipbuilding into discrete tasks, each assigned a preset pay value. To oversee labor and calculate pay, he appointed disciplinary supervisors.

Task work reduced shipwrights to isolated individuals valued by tasks they completed, while diminishing the control they had over production — and, crucially, disrupting the social relations workers relied on to resist. Sandwich estimated that with the implementation of task work, the Royal Dockyards would require far fewer shipwrights, and could fire perhaps half of their workforce. Fearing a strike, other administrators slow-walked the changes until 1751, when unrelated political scandal and intrigue removed Sandwich from office.

When Sandwich finally implemented his “task work” plan in 1775 after returning to power, workers denounced it as enacting “progressive suicide on our Bodies” and went on strike in a massive, countrywide, cross-dockyard work stoppage. Their “combinations,” ad hoc proto-union organizational forms, relied on inter-yard messengers, meetings of delegates from across the country and strike votes. When the Navy Board put the strike down in Portsmouth by firing workers, these laborer networks spread the strike to other yards and ultimately rekindled it again in Portsmouth. The strikers also appealed to the public with subscription campaigns for support against dockyard management.

Administrators fought back with their own opposing appeals to the public. For instance, an anonymous pamphlet published in the summer of 1775 denounced shipwrights as spoiled ingrates who enjoyed higher wages and better job security than many workers. As it turned out, the pamphlet was written by Navy Board Commissioner Timothy Brett. The Board made similar attempts to divide people inside the dockyard. When Deptford workers, who were too poor and too surveilled to strike, did not join their counterparts, the Board rewarded them with a lottery, drawing names out of a hat. The prize was a servant — generally a seven-year apprentice. Still, the strikers held out for months and, in the end, won a partial victory: task work was made optional and limited.

But a generation later, elite labor “reformers” once more made war on workers. Samuel Bentham, a witness to the 1775 dockyard strikes, worked after his apprenticeship in the dockyard as an engineer and a military consultant in imperial Russia. While abroad, Samuel devised the “central inspection principle” that he and his brother Jeremy would later expand into the infamous Panopticon prison concept. After returning to England and earning an appointment as Inspector General of Naval Works in 1796, Bentham used his expertise to propose machinery that would replace workers’ own skill by replicating their labor. His inventions were imperfect, but they helped reorganize labor and thus undermined worker power.

When workers organized another massive strike in 1801 hoping to improve wages amid hideous inflation, the new head of the Admiralty, the Earl of St. Vincent, took bold action his predecessors did not dare. He fired not only a few strike leaders, but hundreds of striking shipwrights, despite the difficulty in replacing them. The gambit worked: the strikes ended and administrators were able to ban chips, keep wages down and continue to reorganize labor. Dockyard radicalism continued, but by 1830, yard workers had lost their unique job security and become annual contract workers.

A combined economic, technological and political strategy was key to successful union-busting in the dockyards, as it is elsewhere today. New technology does not necessitate exploiting workers, but new methods of exploitation often require technology. Task work is an antecedent to recent organizational schemes like the “precision-scheduled railroading” that has devastated rail workers. In July, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) unveiled the “Worker Choice and Flexibility Act,” which would allow “gig economy” businesses to bypass existing labor protections by creating a new category of labor under the cover of technological innovation.

Employers’ anti-worker narratives (of the kind seen in the “impartial” 1775 pamphlet) enable this kind of legislative class warfare. Consider the pernicious “no one wants to work” narrative recently generated by business owners and right-wing politicians to demonize workers for seeking better pay in the strongest labor market in decades.

Prevailing against union-busters will require rejecting these dehumanizing narratives and the top-down implementation of quantifying work regimes they support. English shipwrights’ success over 200 years ago in holding back managers underscores the importance of bold action undergirded by broad solidarity. Shipbuilders’ ultimate defeat underscores the need to not only build solidarity within individual workplaces, but across the country.

"Famous figures like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates have been labeled as Luddites for warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, highlighting concerns about its impact on society and human well-being."

Famous figures such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates have been labeled as Luddites for warning about the dangers of AI, contributing to a modern neo-Luddist impulse.

"The introduction of new technologies or services can lead to regulatory disputes, among other issues, highlighting the need to consider the potential consequences of technological advancements."

The introduction of new technologies or services, such as artificial intelligence, can lead to regulatory disputes and raise concerns about employment and the need for modern law to restrain its effects.

Introducing new technologies or services can lead to regulatory disputes and other issues, including concerns about job security and exploitation.

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Journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week at the age of 81, pictured on July 27, 2006 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Barbara Ehrenreich and the Real Work of Labor Day

Every walkout, every outstretched hand, every word written or spoken in defense of workers' rights, is a victory—whether it results in immediate and obvious success or not.

Richard Eskow

Only a week of two before Barbara Ehrenreich’s death I was in a used bookstore, where I found and bought an out-of-print pamphlet she co-wrote in 1988 with journalist and author Annette Fuentes. It’s called "Women in the Global Factory."

That year, as Reaganism was reprogramming both political parties, Ehrenreich and Fuentes were engaged in the honorable and never-ending work of documenting corporate exploitation. Their work shows us how, even before Bill Clinton brought us the WTO agreement with China, multinational corporations were exploiting impoverished workers and specifically oppressing women—and that the U.S. government was enabling it. The trade deals later promoted by both parties would make the situation far worse in the decades to come.

The pamphlet also reminds us that Ehrenreich was doing the work that needed to be done well before her best-known book, "Nickel and Dimed," made her famous in 2001. It musters facts and figures, as well as sexist pitches like the investment brochure from the Malaysian government which boasts that "the manual dexterity of the Oriental female is famous the world over. Her hands are small and she works with care… Who, therefore, could be more qualified by nature and inheritance to contribute to the efficiency of a bench-assembly line than the Oriental girl?"

There is uplift in the pamphlet, too, when the authors list a series of woman-led labor actions in the developing world. These actions often required great personal sacrifice. They include the following descriptions:

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1973: Two thousand workers at Transitron Electronics walked out in solidarity with a small number of workers who had been fired unjustly. Two days later, 8,000 striking workers met and elected a more militant union leadership.

Bangkok, Thailand, 1976: Seventy young women locked out their Japanese bosses and took control of their garment factory. They continued to produce jeans and floppy hats for export, paying themselves 150 percent more than their bosses had.

South Korea, 1979: Two hundred young women employees of the YH textile and wig factory staged a peaceful vigil and fast to protest the company's threatened closing of the plant. On August 11, the fifth day of the vigil, more than 1,000 riot police armed with clubs and steel shields broke into the building where the women were staying and forcibly dragged them out. Twenty-one year old Ria Kong Suk was killed during the melee. It was her death that touched off the widespread rioting throughout the country that many believe led to the overthrow of the dictator Park Chung Hee.

The Bangkok action reminds us that workers are capable of self-management through a program of workplace democracy. And the fall of Park Chung Hee reminds us that the labor struggle involves more than just the improvement of workers' wages, benefits, and working conditions. Important as those things are, they cannot be permanently achieved unless they also lead to a fundamental realignment of political and economic power.

That's the real work before us. Consider this sentence from Geoff Mann's recent examination of the de-growth movement in The London Review of Books: "Everything (in modern economics) is premised on the assumption that Capital decides, and Labour does what it's told."

That assumption is exactly what the Brisbane, Australia building trades unions challenged in the 1970s when they struck, not only for themselves, but for the rights of others, and for the environmental integrity of the entire city. This effort is documented in a (now out of print) book called "Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation." (Used copies can be found online.) As authors Meredith and Verity Bergmann show, Brisbane's building workers used their power to preserve green spaces (refusing to work on buildings that destroyed them), and defended the rights of women, LGBTQ, and Indigenous people. Their work was eventually suppressed, but not before preserving some green parts of Brisbane forever (at least, so far).

The labor-driven solidarity demonstrated by the "red unions" upends the premise Mann describes and points the way to a more democratic and habitable future. As for the pamphlet: Not all of the actions listed in it resulted in visible progress. But every woman who took part in them helped advance labor rights, by being present, conscious, and brave. Our speech and actions resonate in ways we may never come to understand. Our duty, and our privilege, is to do the work whatever the outcome. Barbara Ehrenreich did that work. So did the women whose actions she and Fuentes recorded.

Every walkout, every outstretched hand, every word written or spoken in defense of workers' rights, is a victory—whether it results in immediate and obvious success or not. The only failure is not to have tried.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Richard Eskow

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a freelance writer. Much of his work can be found on eskow.substack.com. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media. He is a senior advisor with Social Security Works.

We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.

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Someone might oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, recognizing that these changes could be used against them in their context as workers.

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, as they may perceive these changes as a threat to their jobs or livelihood, similar to the historical Luddites who resisted the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution."

Someone might oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that it may threaten their job security or traditional skills, as seen in the historical context of the Luddites and modern-day resistance to technological change.

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that automation and technological advancements will replace their professions and lead to unemployment, as seen in the historical context of Luddites and the supervisor's resistance in the background information."

"Some individuals may oppose new technologies or ways of working due to self-interest protection, fearing that these changes will threaten their jobs or livelihoods, echoing the historical concerns of the Luddites."

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, driven by uncertainty and disturbing trends.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, particularly in America, which is experiencing symptoms of decline such as wealth inequality and poor infrastructure.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, characterized by a decline of the political center and a trend of resistance to change, which may be related to the fear of job loss and uncertainty.

The shift away from a culture of progress is observed in the Western world, where people are resisting technological change and complacency, as seen in the city streets where climate activists are protesting against the destruction of the natural world.

There has been a shift away from a culture of progress in the Western world, where policies addressing climate change have become targets of the political right, indicating a resistance to new ideas and technologies.