This is great from Brian Merchant about the common situation facing workers in the 19th and 21st centuries which fuelled the development of the Luddites as a movement:
Imagine dedicating years of your life to learn a difficult job that was supposed to guarantee you a good living—playing by the rules, you might say; going to school, learning a trade, investing incredible volumes of time and resources to obtain a modest level of station and security—only to realize that the deal was suddenly void. Your faith in systems working as intended would be as broken as a hammer-smashed frame.
Now, you do not know if, when, or how your job will vanish altogether, along with your identity. Imagine not having any other realistic options. What you did know was that someone else, with advantages you did not have, could suddenly acquire new technologies that would allow them to reorganize those rules for their benefit.
What are your options, really? You might go to work in the factory that has absorbed and degraded your job. It will pay less, the conditions will be miserable, the freedoms you are accustomed to will be gone, and you will now have bosses controlling every aspect of your daily routine, critiquing and denigrating your work. They would prefer a child apprentice anyway; they’re more pliable and don’t talk back. Or, retrain for a new job? You have built a life around the one you thought you had, and given years to it; you are proud of it. You would be far behind, paid less, and unconditioned to a job in a new line of work.
Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant pg
Mark Carrigan 