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Were the old jobs better? Hardly. The very reason that people came to work in these horrible conditions for minimal wages was that what they did before was even

• onion2k 12y ago
  Not really. The impact of mechanisation was very bad to start with. Life expectancy fell to just 25 years during the first decade of the industrial revolution. When factory owners realised their workers were literally dropping dead on the factory floor they hurried to do something about it and conditions improved pretty quickly, but it's certainly the case that the industrialisation necessitated changes that hadn't been considered necessary before. Life obviously wasn't brilliant prior to the spinning jenny, but it was definitely better than the 20 years that followed its proliferation. If Uber is really a parallel then the workers who drive for them are in for a couple of decades of having a pretty rubbish time. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic-history-0 http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic...