Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Attila Rebak
“In the spring of 1812, British textile workers smashed power looms across Nottinghamshire, convinced that the machines would make their skills worthless and their families destitute. They were right about the disruption. Mills did displace hand-weavers. Communities that had organized themselves around a particular kind of skilled labor were genuinely torn apart. The Luddites weren’t stupid, and they weren’t wrong to feel the ground shifting. They were wrong about one thing: the conclusion. The labor those machines displaced didn’t vanish. It migrated into factories, railways, cities, and industries that hadn’t existed, filling wants that hand-weavers in 1812 couldn’t have imagined needing to satisfy. We are the Luddites now. Not the smashing machines part — the being right about the disruption and wrong about the conclusion part.” (03/12/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/robot-wont-take-your-job-government-might