Luddism 101. Take one of the most transformative innovations in human history, ignore the enormous benefits it has delivered, selectively identify its negative consequences, and declare that the people who opposed it were right about everything. By that standard, we should still be debating whether the printing press was a mistake. There's something remarkably arrogant about enjoying the fruits of human ingenuity while treating the ingenuity itself as a regrettable development. Civilization didn't advance because people surrendered to their fears of progress. It advanced because others refused to.

I wonder, Matt, do you use: A record player or Spotify? Encyclopedias or Google? Paper maps or Google Maps? A phone book or online directories? A newspaper or online news? A dictionary or online definitions? A fax machine or email? Postage stamps or instant messaging? A landline or internet calling? A VHS collection or Netflix? A television guide or online schedules? A radio broadcast or podcasts? A physical calendar or Google Calendar? A filing cabinet or cloud storage? A bank teller or online banking? A checkbook or electronic payments? A stockbroker or online investing? Newspaper classifieds or online marketplaces? A printed catalog or Amazon? An airline timetable or live flight tracking? A hotel brochure or online reviews? A weather almanac or live forecasts? An instruction manual or YouTube tutorials? A medical encyclopedia or online medical resources? A newspaper job listing or LinkedIn? A ticket booth or online ticketing? A newspaper archive or searchable digital archives? A translation dictionary or instant translation? A recipe book or millions of searchable recipes? A television network's permission or direct access to millions of viewers? And Matt, would you rather distribute your opinions through pamphlets on street corners or broadcast them instantly to millions through the very technology you're condemning? The internet has problems. So does every transformative technology. But declaring its critics right about literally everything while enjoying its extraordinary benefits is a spectacular exercise in taking progress for granted. You aren't demonstrating that the internet was a mistake. You're demonstrating how comfortable people can become with miracles they no longer recognize.

You're explicitly advocating parasitism through authoritarianism while calling the people whose wealth you want to confiscate parasites. You demand the fruits of their productivity, claim the authority to seize them, and celebrate their inability to escape your demands. It's an attempt to claim moral virtue through theft and discrimination, with the added irony of condemning as parasites the very people you intend to live off.