A (possibly) thin-skinned ex-submariner, Nuclear power, and Ned Ludd

[Snipped out greetings and pleasantries]

One of the ideas that I have been trying to share about the battle that all new technologies face dates back to the days of Ned Lud - the perhaps mythical character who led the fight against power driven weaving looms during the Industrial Revolution. The people he led became famous and have even entered our modern lexicon - "Luddite" is the term applied to people who stand in the way of progress. They are often seen in a rather complimentary way as fighting to preserve an idyllic way of life against technology driven change.

I've never heard it used in a complimentary way, incidentally. To address this first paragraph, economic-driven fear of new technology did not begin with Ludd, but dates back to actions by stocking-makers in the late 1600s, and led up to what most consider the start of the "Luddite" movement in 1811. Actually, Ludd 's destruction of looms in 1779 is believed to have nothing to do with the movement that bears his name.

A deeper reading of the story gives a slightly different understanding of what the word really means. The specific people who followed Lud's lead and took direct action against the people building and installing power driven looms were not disinterested bystanders who wanted to maintain a simple way of life. They were, instead, members of the guild of skilled weavers. They were elites whose skills with hand looms provided a much better living than the average person; they protected their knowledge through limited apprenticeship programs. They had a lot to lose in a world where people could purchase large quantities of inexpensive cloth made without much reliance on skilled labor.

Actually, this is a disputed point among historians of technology and economists. Often called the "Luddite Fallacy," this idea that protest against technological change was due to fear of mass unemployment and degradation of working conditions is simply untrue. At the Macro level, technological advancement which increases productivity drives down prices, increases demand for material goods and the number of workers needed to produce them. See Alex Tabarrok's excellent post on the subject.

One thing I may concede is that as global trade barriers have been relaxed, the Luddite Fallacy may be somewhat true as the cost of labor becomes comparatively expensive in countries with a high standard of living and thus unemployment does rise in industrialized nations while production of material goods is relocated to countries with lower wage and living standards. While Thomas Friedman waxes eloquent about the Flat Earth, he forgets that Henry Ford made sure he paid his workers enough that they could buy the cars they built. Sadly, even Wal Mart neglects the lessons of Mr. Ford today, and pays wages that barely let their employees shop there. Sam Walton may be revered as a genius and a paragon of morality by some while Ford is routinely vilified as an anti-semite and violent union-buster, but Ford improved the standard of living of his own workers while revolutionizing industry productivity. If I was President and had to choose an economic advisor, I'd probably gravitate towards the anti-semite and union-buster instead of the guy whose company wastes money investigating executives for having affairs with each other. (yes, I know Ford had a morals police, but in today's world I think Mr. Walton's standards are a bit anachronistic.)

If you want to nitpick about Guilds, Guild membership was a requirement to engage in most trades in pre-industrial England, earned through a process beginning with apprenticeship, and after time spent as a "journeyman" a prospective member would present the senior membership of the Guild with a "masterpiece" along with what could be called an application fee. If you were judged to be competent enough to operate your own business, you were admitted.

What the Guilds actually did was an early form of accreditation or licensing, not dissimilar from many professions today, including your own, in which you had to pass Nuke school and eventually qualify in order to earn your Dolphins and serve on those two SSBNs. Because of the process involved in joining a Guild as a "master," this maintained a standard of quality for products and services which continues today in professional associations, licensing boards and some unions, to say nothing of military organizations. 

In addition, the Guilds provided many services which Government did not, including pensions and benefits for widows and orphans of members. 

Please forgive me if I get all the details wrong, but as you entered the Silent Service after your graduation from USNA, did you not experience a similar process?. Upon completion of Nuke school (Apprenticeship) you endured a training period ending with qualification and testing, after which you earned the right to wear the Dolphin insignia, letting all that saw you in uniform (and knew what meant) know that the DNR (at the time the legendary Admiral Rickover) considered you fit to serve as an Officer aboard a Nuclear powered submarine. You did join a Guild. As a benefit, you also will receive a pension, and your family would receive similar benefits were anything to happen to your boat (doubtful considering the safety record of American subs since the sinking of the Thresher). 

Now, the advent of the Nuclear boats in the '50s and '60s didn't make obsolete the skills of those who maintained the Diesel-electric plants of the older subs, since the Diesel is still carried as a backup, and at the beginning there was certainly still a role for the huge pool of engineers out there (you certainly should know the "Diesel Boats Forever" pin). Were those guys Luddites?

(as an aside,  Weavers were certainly not "elites" in English society, as they "worked with their hands" and in no way could be considered Gentlemen. )

The original Luddites were members of a well established, prosperous enterprise that organized to take action to stop or at least slow the advance of a competitive technology. They were not selflessly seeking to protect a good way of life from destruction by new technology, they were selfishly trying to protect their own privileged position in a society. They did not care that clothing was so terribly expensive before industrial production that only the wealthy could afford more than one or two outfits. They were unmoved by the fact that poor people often shivered in inadequate garments or lived in filth because they avoided washing the few outfits that they had for fear of wearing them out.

Actually, the movement is viewed by some historians as a mass protest (some even go so far as to say paramilitary organization) that grew from the 1815 end of the Napoleonic Wars' and the economic devastation of the English economy, including mass unemployment that followed. Other uprisings at the same time that might be more appropriate to your thesis were directed against the introduction of farm equipment and decrease of agricultural workers' wages, leading to the Swing Riots of 1830. See if you can find a copy of E.P. Thompson's seminal work The Making of the English Working Class. 

The same story plays itself out in industry after industry. Plastics got demonized by a coalition of the steel and aluminum industries who saw their container, toy, and automotive markets getting invaded by the easier to handle, lighter weight material. Apple and Commodore - in the early days of personal computers - got portrayed as suppliers of buggy, unreliable, insecure machines that could never handle real business tasks by companies like Digital, Unisys, and IBM that made mainframes that only large companies could afford.

You're comparing apples and oranges. While plastics may have gotten a bum rap at first, much of the vitriol was directed at them by consumer groups who saw them as unsafe, especially in the automotive industries (which they were). 

The analogy to the Computer industry is simply just plain wrong. Apples and Commodores flew off the shelves despite the efforts of the DEC, etc. Remember, the Apple II and IBM PC were huge sellers because the industry underestimated the value of the software that could be ran on them, or as we say, the Killer App (see VisiCalc).  

DEC fell on their faces because they simply didn't see it coming and were too invested in the minicomputer market. IBM got on board with the original IBM PC, but made a major mistake in using commodity parts, which begat the IBM Clone industry (remember Compaq?), and stumbled a second time by passing the buck for the operating system software to a New Mexico-based outfit called Micro-Soft, run by a couple of Harvard dropouts known for implementing BASIC on pretty much any home PC you could buy. IBM failed to see the power of these Generative Systems (as Harvard's Jonathan Zittrain calls them in his new book) just as Microsoft failed to see the rise of the browser and Internet (another Generative System).

As you pointed out, MySpace, Facebook and other interactive media efforts get bombarded by mainstream media with stories about their potentially negative impact on the young. Of course those same media properties air programs that portray hundreds of murders and other violent acts every week while trying to attract the same eyeballs that are moving to more interactive, arguably more educational uses of their time in the online world. In other words, FUD happens.

I will again take issue with your portrayal of the negative media attention as purposeful FUD. I see these stories on my News Corporation O&O Fox News station (WTTG-DT) as well as Dateline, etc etc because they attract viewers, not due to any effort to discredit social media or the Internet. If it Bleeds, it Leads. 

From a human security point of view, the battle against nuclear power was probably the worst example of all. The visible Luddites in that case hid behind the mantle of selfless Environmentalism, but the real power probably came from the richest enterprise the world has ever known. Though there is a lot of money in Silicon Valley, the total revenues of all technology companies combined pale when compared to Exxon-Mobil. Last year, that single company sold more than $340 BILLION worth of product and banked more than $40 BILLION in net profit. That company, however famous, only has a 2-3% share of the oil market, which itself is only about 1/3 of the total energy market.

You're unhappy that I criticize you, but look at the context. In response to an interview with Greenpeace founder Moore, who directly links the anti Nuclear power activism to what was a groundswell of antipathy towards further testing of Nuclear weapons like those carried by the SSBNs on which you served, you point fingers at Big Oil, while hedging your bets with that weasel-word, "probably."

Take a look at the people who control energy wealth in Texas, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Dubai, Iraq, and Iran (not an exhaustive list) and compare the way that they live with the way that most energy consumers in the world live. They have tremendous motives for loosely organizing to fight against the only real source of power that can help displace our collective addiction to fossil fuel. In his talk with you, Patrick Moore mentioned the forward looking master plan of Exxon-Mobil and Shell International for new energy sources in the US, but please understand that the energy business has had long term master planning in place for many decades - there are plenty of books on the subject.

I'd be happy to read some if you'd refer me to a few authoritative ones. I still am skeptical of your idea, though. Again, I'll refer back to Iran. They want to build Nuclear power plants. Of course, they could build breeder reactors and a few bombs here and there, but cheaper electricity flowing into their power grid would free up much of their domestic fuel market (which itself is strained, as their heavily subsidized gasoline prices continue to rise) for other uses, including international sale. Russia, although rich in untapped fossil fuels, has even more to gain as an exporter of Nuclear technology. While we're busy trying to enforce sanctions and beat drums of wear, Putin and friends are selling Iran expensive reactor technology. Dubai only makes 6% of its' GDP from Oil and Gas revenue. I'll repeat my Iran theory with the Saudis, every kilowatt of energy that the Kingdom can generate internally with Nuclear power means more to export. Similarly, in America, increased Nuclear capacity would free up much of our massive petroleum imports for refining for gasoline (a different problem in itself) and other products for which oil is used (hint: watch The Graduate).