Posting on the Slate blog Future Tense, James Bessen takes issue with the notion that technology causes unemployment, illustrating his point by debunking a pair of frequently cited examples, textile workers in the early nineteenth century and telephone operators during the mid-twentieth century.

In a response titled “Luddites Are Almost Always Wrong: Technology Rarely Destroys Jobs” on TechDirt’s Innovation blog, Bessen’s thesis is roundly applauded, but he is taken to task for failure to make the connection between the process which prevents net job destruction (the creation of new jobs) and reasonable access to intellectual property, currently endangered by nonpracticing patent owners (a.k.a. “patent trolls”).