Don't be silly. The world was divided long before the Industrial Revolution, and if "labor" was ever on top of things, it was for fleeting moments. What changed with the Industrial Revolution was the collection of economic power in the hands of a mere titan of industry — instead of some baron, or prince, or caesar, or warlord, or chieftan, or other political personage.
This seems to happen in all societies until a revolution happens and the cycle starts anew just with different actors.
This time we did get game design down to an art with fine mechanics and cheap execution. Perhaps someone with a sharp pen can draw the parallels for us. Surely (if the will is there) it is easy to design something better than the stupid formula where we pretend Personal gain = Collective gain.
That’s the sad part. Big change seems to require a big disruptive event like war or revolution.
But i agree that things seem to get better overall. Unfortunately there are plenty of downs in between and these can last many years.
Before, because of the agricultural revolution, it was divided primarily along lines of land ownership and the familiar inheritance of that.
I am sure hunter gatherer societies were also very territorial. If the area you are hunting or gathering does doesn’t have much animals or plants, all the hard work won’t get you nearly as much food as someone who has a lot of plants and animals on their land.
And if you don’t think early humans were territorial just take a look at chimpanzees or even lions. Being tribal and territorial goes back a long ways.
1500 years ago those who could hoard land and power and influence after the fall of the Western Roman Empire went into decline formed the kernel the feudal aristocracy. But those who were able to capitalize on the merchant and industrial revolutions starting 500 years ago, and the rise of global capitalism, became the kernel of the bourgeoisie in the modern era.
We'll see what happens next.
The GDPR comes along, and HN hated it
In theory, this would balance out and lead towards some level of equality. In practice, the high barrier of entrance and smaller numbers on the side of capital made it much easier for them to drive down labor prices and exploit. That led to massive inequality—think robber barons and the like—which in turn eventually led to the organized labor movement.
We are now recapitulating this historic arc in the information revolution. Now the world is divided into those who own data and those who produce it. Large corporations own giant fields of data and the computing technology required to derive actionable information from it. Everyone else gives up their personal data and attention to feed those enormous machines. This has led to the growing inequality that is causing a breakdown in institutional trust and is driving people out of cities that are increasingly affordable only to the elites who run the data factories.
At some point, we will hopefully have an "organized data movement" where people work together to be able to make effective demands about how their data can be harvested and used. We aren't there yet.