Luddites Are Almost Always Wrong: Technology Rarely Destroys Jobs

Mike Masnick over at Techdirt “gets it”; although the likes of guilds and unions often decry technological improvements as job-killers, Mike exposes the argument as short-sighted and largely absurd.  Innovation may be responsible for some “creative destruction” in the short-term, and employees may need to write-off their investments in human capital as sunk costs, innovative disruption almost always leads to higher-value (and generally, higher-paying) adjacent occupations to fill the employment gap.

Here’s a great satirical work from 19th century French economist and philosopher, Frédéric Bastiat, in which he writes from the perspective of the Luddite candlestickmaker’s union appealing that the French government blot out the sun to prevent unfair competition from the sun: http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html