Thank you for this excellent comment! It seems then that basically everything that's revolutionary - whether technology, government, beliefs, and so on - will tend to extract a blood price before the dust settles. I guess it sort of makes sense: big societal upheavals are difficult to handle peacefully.

So basically we are a bit screwed in our current timeline. We are at the cusp of a post-scarcity society, possibly reach AGI within our lifetimes and possibly even become a space faring civilization. However, it is highly likely that we are going to pay the pound of flesh and only subsequent generations - perhaps yet unborn - will be the ones who will be truly better off.

I suppose it's not all doom and gloom, we can draw stoic comfort from the fact that people in the near future will have an incredibly exciting era full of discovery and wonder ahead of them!