You might be onto something. I read in a book about the world's economic history and why the industrial revolution started in the UK that one of the likely reas

You might be onto something. I read in a book about the world's economic history and why the industrial revolution started in the UK that one of the likely reasons was the rising expense of labour which forced businesses to then find more efficient ways to work which lead to machines and industrialization. So basically In any setting with a surplus of cheap labour this incentive simply isn't there.