The Dirty Truth About Industrialization

There is a tendency in some circles to bemoan the industrialization of the world. How does the song put it? "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"... what a vivid image!

Now here's the real story. For all of human history from the beginning of civilization on, every society on Earth used slavery to accomplish their goals, and for a very simple reason -- do you want to build your pyramid, Cheops? So despite the fact that as Frederick Douglass put it "there is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him," slavery nonetheless remained an entrenched human institution for thousands of years. It was, so they say, a "necessary evil."

Until when? Until the Industrial Revolution. With the development of machines that could do the physical work that captive humans were doing, slavery was an evil that was no longer necessary. And amazingly enough, right at this time for the first time in history abolitionist movements popped up at various points along the globe independently of one another. A perceptible shift in the zeitgeist that led (ostensibly) to the end of slavery. And why? Because of industrialization. Big sooty factories and sludge pipes in rivers. Tell the Lorax he can kiss my ass.