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{"id":7018,"date":"2017-07-26T21:03:24","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T03:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7018"},"modified":"2017-07-27T08:47:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T14:47:09","slug":"guest-post-week-neo-neo-luddites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/guest-post-week-neo-neo-luddites.html","title":{"rendered":"Guest post week: Neo-neo-Luddites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AFrameBreaking-1812.jpg;$ <\/p>\n

Hey, everyone! \u00a0I\u2019m on vacation this week and have invited a few people to contribute blog posts. \u00a0Here\u2019s the first, by \u201cJane the Librarian\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n

It seems to be pretty widely agreed that part of the explanation for Donald Trump\u2019s election is the perception that globalization and automation have left large percentages of Americans without any realistic prospect of a good job.<\/p>\n

Economic dislocation, of course, is nothing new.\u00a0 A lot of history grows from that seed.\u00a0 Once upon a time\u2014in 1779, so it\u2019s said\u2014an English worker smashed two stocking frames in a fit of rage, and his name became a byword for a couple decades afterwards, with new incidents of smashed machinery jokingly attributed to Ned Ludd in a kind of cultural meme of the era.\u00a0 That meme was why a group of English weavers in Nottinghamshire called themselves Luddites a few decades later, when protesting that newly introduced machinery was being used in a \u201cfraudulent and deceitful manner\u201d to avoid established labor practices, and smashing it.<\/p>\n

Ever since then, it has been assumed that new jobs will always spring up to replace the old, inefficient ways which, while they were labor-intensive and therefore provided a source of income for large numbers of people, caused a higher cost of living that made everyone relatively poorer.\u00a0 And new jobs springing up has just about always happened, even if they required moving.\u00a0 That they will is taken as a basic economic tenet by nearly every elite of every Western country.<\/p>\n

But universal, immutable truths are true only until they aren\u2019t.\u00a0 What if Trump\u2019s supporters, the modern Luddites, are right this time?\u00a0 What if this time, things really are different?\u00a0 There are major differences this time, in community and cultural capital as much as economics.\u00a0 What if we\u2019ve picked all the low-hanging fruit of making people richer by making the cost of living lower?\u00a0 And new needs by society for most people\u2014that is, jobs\u2014have not materialized yet.<\/p>\n

What if we\u2019re making most people obsolete?<\/p>\n

Almost simultaneous to receiving this post, I came across an article in City Journal<\/a> on a similar topic; discouragingly, it suggests that the future of work will be that of personal services \u2014 that is, being cynical, the have-nots will become servants of one sort or another to the haves. \u00a0Ugh. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Readers, your thoughts?<\/em><\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0Luddites. \u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AFrameBreaking-1812.jpg; By Chris Sunde; original uploader was Christopher Sunde at en.wikipedia. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"