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This is a list I'm building of Luddite-like behavior. Want to add an example? Leave a comment! (Luddite-like behavior here defined as situations where workers fight a new tech because of impact to their livelihood.)
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Updated 2026-06-11. New rows highlighted
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Zigong (a disciple of Confucius) meets a farmer watering his fields by hand. He offers the use of a more efficient tool, the well-sweep, but the farmer refuses it because machines make machine hearts.
The farmer refuses the tool. Zigong goes away depressed.
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To save on foreign exchange, the government bans the import of chemical fertilizers, shifting to organic fertilizers.
Crop failure, pests, food insecurity. Sri Lanka reverses course 8 months later.
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The American Federation of Musicians' Music Defense League argues and advertises against recorded sound in "talkie" movies.
Neutral (limited state response)
Theaters stopped hiring musicians to play music during the films; films incorporated sound and dialogue.
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Anti-Tech (Monarch feared job loss)
Weak/none (appeal by lone inventor; weavers unorganized)
Success: Patent refused – “would…bring them to ruin by depriving them of employment”. Machine not adopted in her reign.
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Pro-Tech: Authorities deployed army forces to suppress the weavers’ “insurrection”.
Local: Dozens of bands of weavers rioted across the city, destroying the new looms.
Partial Success: Riot was crushed, but mechanization in Spitalfields was delayed ~100 years as a result.
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Neutral (limited state response)
Localized (guild-based)
Partial Success – Occasional concessions; periodic bans on new frames
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Pro-Tech (no protection for inventor)
Local (mob of spinners)
Partial: Angry spinners broke into Hargreaves’ house and “pulled his spinning-jennys to pieces”, forcing him to relocate. Short-term disruption, but spinning jenny prevailed in use.
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Technology prevailed: The destruction caused losses, but manufacturers rebuilt; mechanization of wool production continued.
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Pro-Tech (authorities present but ineffective)
Local/regional (mob ~4,000)
Partial: A mill Arkwright built “was destroyed by a mob in the presence of a strong force of police and military”. Production was restored elsewhere; machine-spinning continued to spread.
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Technology prevailed: The factory was destroyed, but the power loom was soon adopted widely. Weavers’ wages continued to fall as mechanized mills prospered.
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Tech stalled (temporarily): The printing press was rebuilt by 1824 under reformers. Traditional scribes lost their bid to halt print—by the mid-19th century, printed books were commonplace.
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“Bread or Blood” Riots (East Anglia, 1816) – Jobless farm workers riot, destroy mole-ploughs
Neutral/Pro-Tech (magistrates eventually cracked down)
Localized (several counties)
Partial Success – Temporary relief (wage aid); ultimately riots suppressed
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East Anglian Protests (England, 1822) – Farm labor unrest including machine-breaking. “Bread or Blood” Riots continuation
Neutral (local authorities slow to respond)
Localized (regional protests)
Failure – Scattered riots faded; no lasting change in mechanization trajectory
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Pro-Tech: Troops and constables intervened; after a few rioters were arrested “in the dead of night,” the unrest was quelled. The government refused to mandate the wage relief weavers sought.
Widespread (Regional): Uprising of ~1,000 weavers spread over three days; over 1,000 power-looms were destroyed in attacks on 21 mills.
Failure: The riots ended with dozens of weavers shot or arrested; no lasting protections were won (power looms continued to proliferate, and only a token wage was offered privately, termed a “starvation” wage).
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Pro-Tech (machine introduced by authorities)
Local (river sand diggers)
Partial: Traditional sand dredgers “destroyed a machine recently installed to dredge sand” (testimony from trial). The new dredger was wrecked and manual jobs briefly preserved, but mechanized dredging was eventually adopted later.
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Technology prevailed: This was one of the final machine-breaking riots in England. Afterward, British workers turned to new tactics (unions, strikes). The Coventry mill was rebuilt; power-loom weaving continued to expand, ending the handweaving trade.
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Technology prevailed: The destruction of the mill temporarily set back mechanization, but within years steam-powered factories spread across Catalonia. The Spanish army and police repressed the 1835 uprisings, and industrialization resumed, albeit with ongoing labor strife.
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Neutral/Pro-Tech (state had granted patent & contracts)
Local (French tailors’ guild members)
Partial: A mob of tailors destroyed inventor Barthélemy Thimonnier’s factory of 80 sewing machines, fearing “the end of their trade”. Thimonnier fled and the venture collapsed, delaying adoption. (Within a decade, sewing machines reappeared in the US/UK.)
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Plug Plot Riots (Britain, 1842) – General strike; workers pulled steam-engine plugs to halt mills
Pro-Technology (troops broke strikes; Chartists arrested)
Widespread (multi-industry strike in industrial towns)
Failure – Short-term factory stoppages; demands (wages, voting rights) largely unmet as government repressed activists
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Pro-Tech (Prussian army intervened)
Local (spontaneous town riots)
Failure: Weavers smashed machinery and looted manor houses, but Prussian troops shot and killed protesters. The revolt was suppressed; factory power looms continued to replace cottage handweaving.
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Factory owners agreed to increase wages, an additional half hour for lunch
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Mechanized silk reeling introduced by Chen Qiyuan through the Jichanglong Silk Reeling Factory, China’s first machine silk-reeling factory. Chen wanted to keep the production "Chinese" and so used footpedal power instead of steam.
Local authorities sided against the factory, viewing mechanized industry as a threat to traditional social and economic structure
Traditional hand-reeling silk producers and local anti-industrial interests resisted the factory.
Factory was forced to close in 1881; Chen Qiyuan relocated operations to Macau
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Foreign workers with experience or knowledge of unions and strikes
Factories agreed to increase wages
p18 (all Google translated) "While the workers' sense of the need to organize their ranks into unions may have emerged as a result of the gradual evolution of free contractual relations—or may have arisen from a crisis affecting a vital aspect of the workers' lives, thereby compelling them to unite in solidarity to avert danger—we believe that the introduction of machinery for cigarette rolling in the late nineteenth century, and the consequences that ensued, The recourse taken by factory owners—specifically, their decision to lay off a large number of cigarette rollers or to reduce their wages—served as the catalyst for the cigarette rollers' strike. This event was remarkable in both its scope—encompassing workers across the majority of Cairo’s cigarette factories—and its duration, having persisted for over two months. Furthermore, it culminated in the establishment of Egypt’s first labor union.
Until the late 1890s, cigarette rolling was done manually, requiring highly skilled and precise workers, mostly Greeks and Armenians, along with a few Egyptians who excelled at the craft. Wages for those working in this profession were relatively high. When machines were introduced, any worker with quick training could operate the new machine, which produced many times the output of manual rolling, for a lower wage. Consequently, there was no longer any need to retain the rolling workers if they refused to accept lower wages, leading to their major strike in December 1899.
The foreign workers from the cigarette rolling mills were the driving force behind this strike, by virtue of the spirit of union work that they brought with them from countries where the dust of battles between workers and capital had risen, and where union work had gone far in terms of organization and methods of collective struggle, and by virtue of their presence as a majority in those factories, and their reliance on consular protection and foreign privileges.
This strike included a number of cigarette factories in Cairo. The strikers aimed to pressure the factory owners into negotiating and meeting their demands through two methods: first, by prolonging the strike until cigarettes became scarce in the market; and second, by using force to prevent the owners from hiring new workers to replace them, assaulting them and preventing them from entering the factories. According to the Al-Liwaa newspaper , the number of strikers reached 900 workers, distributed across various factories.
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- Machinery replaced handicraft: skill disappeared and poverty followed
- Labor-saving machines replaced human workers and workers became expendable
- Railways replaced constraint and slowness and harm spread faster (and it became easier for people with bad intentions to visit holy sites)
N/A (not yet) This is from Gandhi's book “Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule”
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Protest by workers against the government's imposed mechanization plan
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Pro-Tech (Heath government and courts pressed to end strike)
Widespread (TGWU dockworkers, Shop Stewards Committee)
Partial Success: Facing 20,000 job losses from container freight shift, dockers struck and even defied court orders. They won short-term concessions: unionized dock labor was extended to some new container depots (preserving jobs at facilities like Chobham Farm via a deal to “take on registered dockers” and phase out lower-paid staff). However, this victory was temporary – by the 1980s the Dock Labour Scheme was abolished and jobs eventually declined.
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Mixed: The strike ended with minor concessions but no removal of automation. GM continued adopting robotics and eventually cut thousands of jobs. In the long run, automation “won” as Lordstown’s workforce dwindled and the plant closed in 2019, though the unrest did spark a national debate on humane work and helped galvanize the 1970s labor movement.
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Widespread (national union)
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Pro-Tech (Thatcher government backed Murdoch)
Widespread (Fleet Street print unions – NGA, SOGAT, etc.), 6000 workers
Failure: Print unions struck 54 weeks to block Rupert Murdoch’s new computerized newspaper plant. Murdoch fired 6,000 striking printers and moved production to Wapping with 670 new workers using direct-input word processing. The strike collapsed; it was a “lengthy failed strike” that broke union power and ushered in modern printing technology across UK papers.
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Picket/protest at branch
Neutral/Supported (USPS implemented tech)
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Union-organized protests
Neutral (government/business ignored calls)
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Protest rally (picketing central bank)
Central Bank denied intent; union petitioned govt
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Compromise: The government negotiated with taxi associations, including offering them stakes in BRT operating companies. Despite early violence, the BRT system continued expanding. Many minibus owners eventually integrated or competed on parallel routes. The BRT survived (tech “won”), but the unrest forced authorities to phase it in more slowly and include taxi industry compensation.
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Court injunction ordering negotiations
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Wildcat strike (refusal to work)
Management threatened pay cuts/fines
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Widespread (Maritime Union)
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Public picketing (sidewalk)
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Violent attacks, demonstrations
City introduced regulations after protests
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Widespread (mass mobilization)
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Widespread (national forum)
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Widespread (ASLEF union)
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Widespread (taxi unions)
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Widespread (taxi unions)
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Road blockade (airport road)
Government later regulated apps; condemned protest violence
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Widespread (Unite Here, ~8k)
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Road blockades; clashes
Police used tear gas; fines and license suspensions for app drivers
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Widespread (rickshaw union)
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Existing 2018 law targeted Uber; Careem acquired by Uber
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Neutral: The conflict played out between the union and studios; government did not intervene in the labor dispute or mandate AI policy. (Some politicians voiced sympathy with writers, but no direct state action influenced the outcome – it was settled at the bargaining table.)
Widespread: Virtually the entire Writers Guild of America (over 11,000 film/TV writers) mobilized. In 2023 they launched a massive industry-wide strike for five months, making AI limits a core contract demand. This collective action was highly organized and garnered broad support from other unions and the public.
Success: The writers prevailed – the new WGA contract secured “historic protections” against AI in the writing process. Studios agreed that AI-generated material cannot be used to undermine writers’ credits or pay, and writers cannot be forced to adopt AI. This victory – unlikely to many at first – showed that strong labor action could set boundaries on a disruptive technology.
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Protest blockade (sit-ins, blocking machines)
Management crackdowns (threats of layoff)
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Local (auto-rickshaw guild)
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Neutral (federal gov. mediated, no support)
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Strike (extended work stoppage)
Opposed (ministries pushing automation)
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Widespread (taxi unions)
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Public campaign / threats
Neutral (federal govt. also prioritizes productivity)