Comment by lukeschlather 8 hours ago
The Luddites were employed by textile manufacturers and destroyed machines to get better bargaining power in labor negotiations. They weren't indiscriminately targeting automation, they targeted machines that directly affected their work.
Criminality is an arbitrary benchmark here, cutting people off can be illegal due to the risks involved.
However what’s more interesting is the deeper social contracts involved. Destroying other people’s stuff can be perfectly legal such as fireman breaking car windows when someone parks in front of a fire hydrant. Destroying automation doesn’t qualify for an exception, but it’s not hard to imagine a different culture choosing to favor the workers.
Inflicting damage is usually justified by averting larger damage. Very roughly, breaking a $200 car window is justified in order to save a $100k house from burning down. Stealing someone's car is justified when you need a car to urgently drive someone bleeding to a hospital to save their life (and then you don't claim the car is yours, of course).
I don't think Luddites had an easy justification like this.
I'm pretty sure the Luddites judged the threat the machines posed to their livelihood to be a greater damage than their employer's loss of their machines. So for them, it was an easy justification. The idea that dollar value encapsulates the only correct way to value things in the world is a pretty scary viewpoint (as your reference to the value of saving a life illustrates).
Which makes the comparison of modern anti-AI proponents (like myself) and Luddites even more apt and accurate.