It took almost a hundred years, and a lot of bloodshed for quality of life to return to where it was prior to the industrial revolution. I'm not particularly keen on seeing that happen in my life.
"It took almost a hundred years, and a lot of bloodshed for quality of life to return to where it was prior to the industrial revolution. "
Sorry, that is simply not true.
According to one study, real wages almost doubled in England between 1780 and 1850. An attempted rebuttal claimed that they "only" went up 30%.
Like many people, you seem to have an overly-rosy idea of what life is actually like as a subsistence-level, stoop-labor, agricultural peasant. Workers flocked to the new factories because those jobs were an improvement over what they had before (the exact same process is going on in China as we speak).
Were those jobs pretty nasty and horrible by modern standards? Of course they were. But not by the standards of the time.
This seems like a difficult moral argument to develop precisely. At what point in history do you prevent the current suffering, even if it would have resulted in a huge subsequent increase in quality of life?
Sorry, that is simply not true.
According to one study, real wages almost doubled in England between 1780 and 1850. An attempted rebuttal claimed that they "only" went up 30%.
Like many people, you seem to have an overly-rosy idea of what life is actually like as a subsistence-level, stoop-labor, agricultural peasant. Workers flocked to the new factories because those jobs were an improvement over what they had before (the exact same process is going on in China as we speak).
Were those jobs pretty nasty and horrible by modern standards? Of course they were. But not by the standards of the time.