Slaves
Well, a lot of folks argue Greece, Rome, etc didn't have an industrial age because they had cheap & plentiful slave labor, in the literal sense.
Supposedly the Black Death lead to a middle class and higher wages because, well, it killed off most of the serfs, so workers were in short supply.
Not a historian, but it fascinates me when something as dire as the Black Death led to an overall improvement in human daily existence. Or maybe it's late at night and I'm very drunk watching my 3D printer do its magic.
Hopefully it's the shittiest jobs that get automated first, so people don't have to do them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
