Reader Responses to Creative Destruction

I would like to add some historical context to what Peter Howitt had to say in his interview as printed in the BAM. The Luddites did not oppose the steam engine and were not as a rule opposed to technological innovation. The original Luddites were weavers who had in fact developed many labor-saving devices and machines to help them do their work better and more efficiently. They destroyed only those machines that were intended to replace them, not machines as a whole. They opposed the people who were pushing automation to sell an inferior product to the public and who appropriated the benefits to themselves without sharing them with the community they were disrupting. When the movement was finally crushed, it was at the behest of the factory owners and conducted by the government. This is all to say that innovation is not bad in itself. Rather, it is who is promoting the innovation and for what reason, and who loses out on it, that matter, not the innovation itself.