But it’s true that the 1st industrial revolution mostly turned into creating new ways to conquer and enslave, and at the height of it the average lifespan for an urban worker was less than 20. The paradigm then was very much one of unenlightened self-interest; there’s no need for history to repeat itself.

What was its “height”? And I don’t know about history repeating itself, but the average worker now lives a much longer time. Perhaps you could say at the inception, conditions for workers were terrible, lifespan short, but as the affluence spread, workers stopped putting up with that. This would imply there is a progression inherent in the thing. Jeffrey Sachs puts a different spin on the industrial revolution and poverty, which I quoted a lot in this post on poverty.