With a lot of systems, the business system design is complex enough in the first place that if you add a distributed system design to it as well you just end up with a colossal mess. And worse still you can't even see a lot of the complexity easily as it's hidden in how the distributed system is configured.

A normal system design, derisively called a monolith by some, is much clearer and explicit. It's less code. It's more reliable, less brittle. It comes with less footguns.

Distributed systems are not a better technology, like weaving looms were, they are simply an alternative design that is presently overused by incompetent software architects.

So it's not a luddite movement, it's an anti-complexity-for-the-sake-of-complexity movement. Try to not call us luddites again. Personally I view people that advocate for such designs by default as incompetent and that they should never be let anywhere near system design as they clearly don't understand the costs.

Simpler is almost always better, and there needs to be extremely good reasons to switch to incredibly costly distributed design patterns.