this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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North Korea 2024
People don't seem to realize, as it becomes easier to automate and maintain oppressive systems, the more scarce that democracy will be. Ask Russians.
The Luddites were right.
Trying to switch the term Troglodyte with Luddite makes your comment even more ironic. The British government ultimately dispatched 12,000 troops to suppress Luddite activity, and as Lord Byron denounced "I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country".
It isn't the technology, it's how it's used, and authoritarians are being much quicker on the uptake because of the iffiness of democratic infighting that has also been unable to topple, suppress, or even stop the power of authoritarian states from growing.
The Luddites weren't against technology. They were against technology taking their jobs.
[off topic]
"The Difference Engine" is an alternate history novel where Byron became Prime Minister and Ada Lovelace got to have a working computer to work with, Written by B. Sterling and W. Gibson.
Authoritarianism is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, ask Syria. Climate change will ultimately being about the collapse of all authoritarianism because there simply won't be enough excess to support hierarchy. The question is if we will be smart enough to being about that change before material conditions force it to happen.