Smash the Machine?

Here is an unapologetic defense of the Luddites: they were right before their time, says the Christian Science Monitor. In this news article, not a single dissenting voice is quoted against the claim that “automation” is destroying jobs and leaving everyone worse off. Not a word is given about the implication of the case against machines: that jobs should consist of people doing things that can be done better and more cheaply otherwise, i.e. that there is a social case to be made for waste, inefficiency, and diversion of resources from more valuable tasks to less valuable ones. The case against automation, writes Rothbard (1959), is the case for the drudgery, tedium, and routine that technological improvement tends to eliminate. Instead, he says, let us “hail modern developments of automation for what it is and will be: a superb method of greatly increasing the standards of living and the leisure hours, of all of us.”