Comment by Negitivefrags
6 hours ago
I suspect that the conditions the textile workers lived in when western countries were creating textiles is not so different in absolute terms from the condition that they live in now.
It's just that the western world moved on.
Almost all economies that have developed have started with textiles. This is the starting point on the ladder. Eventually, we will run out of poor countries that haven't had a textile industry yet, and at that point, either it will be entirely automated, or we will no longer have cheap textiles!
But I'm betting on the automation.
Textile manufacturing was dominated by Western countries until the 60s/70s btw. Berkshire Hathaway was a textile mill when Warren Buffet bought it.
Besides, if people are living in the same conditions today as the presumably Dickensian ones you were imagining, that alone suggests that the benefits of automation might not be widely distributed...