Robots aren't causing unemployment -- we are

Before panic descends and we begin imagining scenarios where redundancies abound and pink slips are handed out en masse, let's focus instead on the boring facts. Threats to jobs are enough to rile up anger and anxiety, there is more than enough historical precedence for this. Two hundred years ago, a group of people was so angered by the increasing use of machines in the textile industry that they smashed the machines in protest -- these were the Luddites. In response, the British government made breaking machines a capital offense. The Smithsonian magazine, while describing the upheaval of the times, explained that "as the Industrial Revolution began, workers were naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves "were totally fine with machines"'. The article quoted Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites, who added that "they confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labor practices." The question of man vs. machine is something that many have struggled with. As part of his protest against British imperialism, the Father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, burnt machine-made clothes and encouraged people to adopt the Indian handwoven fabric called Khadi. He said, "I have the conviction within me that, when all these achievements of the machine age will have disappeared, these our handicrafts will remain; when all exploitation will have ceased, service and honest labor will remain.