The industrial revolution could have done a much better job taxing and regulating industrialists to reduce squalor. "They will outgrow us if we don't squalor-maxx" was a dogshit argument then and it's a dogshit argument now. But no, the industrialists were so dead set on ignoring social goals to maximize their own bank accounts that after growing to command their own country, and then the world, they eventually set eyes on each other and burned it all down. That was the point when labor was able to successfully demand and receive concessions which turned out to not be impossible after all! Even in the bombed out shell of a country that was left after the destruction wrought by the insatiable greed of the industrialists whose growth was supposed to be the only thing that mattered.

This time around, everyone has nukes and drones and AI bioweapons, so maybe we could consider the social goals first, and see if we can't grow on that dimension before we go through another episode of worldwide capital incineration? Just a thought.