The elite really don't see why the proletariat should be interested in, or enjoy the dignity of, actual skill and quality.
Hence the enshitification of everything, and now AI promises to commoditize everything into slop.
Sad because it is the very deoth of society that has birthe
All technology has the effect of concentrating wealth, and anyone who insists on using their two hands to fashion things when machines exist that can do it better will always be relegated to the "artisan" bin as time rolls on.
You might think it was worth it now because you got an iphone, but they didn't get an iphone.
Just because a paradigm shift doesn't miraculously catapult us all into a post-scarcity economy overnight, that doesn't mean it's not an important milestone on a longer road.
And it is true, those people did not got an iPhone and died, but this is also you saying this for them. You don't know all the specifics of history or all their motivations, the industrial revolution had a bloody story, but it's origins were also organic, it also had aspects of improvement. The world population grew almost 10x.
I don't think we are in a position to judge those past events to the lens you are posing.