Comment by pessimizer
3 months ago
The industrial revolution's immediate effect was to radically lower lifespans and lengthen working hours. After all of those people suffered and died, lifespans gradually got long again, although working hours never went back to normal.
You might think it was worth it now because you got an iphone, but they didn't get an iphone.
Your view is incomplete. It did lowered lifespans, but also increased them MUCH MORE than before. It was not "oh, it got worse, now it is recovering". It was "it got worse, now it is much better than before". The amount of infant deaths it lowered, for example, is massive.
And it is true, those people did not got an iPhone and died, but this is also you saying this for them. You don't know all the specifics of history or all their motivations, the industrial revolution had a bloody story, but it's origins were also organic, it also had aspects of improvement. The world population grew almost 10x.
I don't think we are in a position to judge those past events to the lens you are posing.
This could be a comment about the Neolithic Revolution
Well, what they were doing before was sure as shit not going to get them an iPhone.
Just because a paradigm shift doesn't miraculously catapult us all into a post-scarcity economy overnight, that doesn't mean it's not an important milestone on a longer road.