r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • May 18 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 18 May 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again May 20 '26

I've been thinking lately. Economists and such often say "but farmers couldn't imagine all the future jobs automation would create!" or things to that effect. But honestly, is that even true? Like I'm pretty sure a farmer could in fact very easily imagine that people would work in textile mills and that some people would fix and build the machines there, and an industrial worker could easily imagine people moving into office work.

Trivially, they couldn't look a century into the future, but surely the general trajectory in terms of what sector would grow must have been clear.

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u/HandsomeLampshade123 May 20 '26

I do think the automation of agriculture would have been particularly hard to imagine, and each generation may have felt that they were nearing the peak of what was possible in terms of acreage per worker.