Comment by Retric
It’s an interesting question because the benefits of automation aren’t necessarily shared early on. If you can profitably sell a shirt for 10$ while everyone else needs to sell for 20$ there’s no reason to actually charge 10$ you might as well charge 19.95$ and sell just as many shirts for way more money.
So if society is actually saving 5c/shirt while “losing” 9$ in labor per shirt. On net society could be worse off excluding the one person who owns the factory and is way better off. Obviously eventually enough automation happens so the price actually falls meaningfully, but that transition isn’t instantaneous where decisions are made in the moment.
Further we currently subsidize farmers to a rather insane degree independent of any overall optimization for social benefit. Thus we can’t even really say optimization is the deciding factor here. Instead something else is going on, the story could have easily been framed as the factory owners doing something wrong by automating but progress is seen as a greater good than stability. And IMO that’s what actually decides the issue for most people.
In regards to both the Luddites and the farmers, you seem to forget the most important factor. Food.
In the case of the Luddites, it was a literal case of their children being threatened with starvation. "Livelihood" at the time was not fungible. The people affected could not just go apply at another industry. And there were no social services to help them eat during the transition period.
As for the farmers, any governing body realises that food security is national security. If too many people eschew farming for more lucrative fields, then the nation is at risk. Farming needs to appear as lucrative as medicine, law, and IT to encourage people to enter the field.