Again, this betrays a strong hindsight bias.

Nobody had any idea what was coming with the industrial revolution. There wasn't obviously other work for people. And for long periods of time nobody had an answer to that question for large percentage of the population.

In hindsight, we know the answers NOW, but then they did not know what was going to happen. We also don't know what's going to happen, it could go as you hypothesize. Or the Jevon's paradox people might be right and there's way more work to do.

The uncertainty is the historical lesson, not that "it'll all work out"

Your comment betrays a lazy survivorship bias.