‘‘‘Left’ and ‘right’ mean the same thing today that they’ve meant since the French Revolution. Ask someone, ‘What’s more important: property rights, or human rights?’ If they answer: ‘Property rights are human rights,’ they are on the right.’’
In Blood In the Machine,@bcmerchant delivers the definitive history of the #Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":
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The sf writer #StevenBrust says that the test to tell whether someone is on the right or the left is simple: ask whether property rights are more important than human rights. If the person says "property rights are human rights," they are on the right.
The state response to the Luddites crisply illustrates this distinction. The Luddites wanted an orderly and lawful transition to automation, one that brought workers along and created shared prosperity and quality goods.
"#Populism" isn't intrinsically left or right. The distinction between the two is often obscured by jargon, but there's a simple litmus test (courtesy of #StevenBrust): "ask what's more important: human rights, or property rights. If they say 'property rights are human rights,' they're on the right."
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If you've gotten into #StevenBrust I'd enjoy hearing about it.
I go back to the #Taltos series every few years. Including the prequel series, which has supporting characters of the main series as main characters in their own rights.
I think they hold up and they're short reads, generally. (The prequels are intentionally longer because of the style they're written in.)