Overall, I found this very informative. One quibble:
Shorter hours, cleaner and safer factories, and the end of child labor are luxuries that could only happen after an increase in per-capita wealth.
The per-capita wealth is at least one level removed as a cause. The actual cause is increased profit for the factory that can be turned in to those benefits. Do you have any evidence that early unsafe factories had insufficient profit for that to happen? Is it safer to assume that the owners felt no pressure to give up their generous profits for the benefit of worker safety?
To be clear, you’re quoting a sentence from a paragraph that I described as “one possible narrative”, in a section where I described two opposing narratives and then explored which aspects of each seemed to be supported by this story.
Overall, I found this very informative. One quibble:
The per-capita wealth is at least one level removed as a cause. The actual cause is increased profit for the factory that can be turned in to those benefits. Do you have any evidence that early unsafe factories had insufficient profit for that to happen? Is it safer to assume that the owners felt no pressure to give up their generous profits for the benefit of worker safety?
To be clear, you’re quoting a sentence from a paragraph that I described as “one possible narrative”, in a section where I described two opposing narratives and then explored which aspects of each seemed to be supported by this story.
I do think that safety measures could have begun earlier. See my reply to jpsmith: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DQKgYhEYP86PLW7tZ/how-factories-were-made-safe?commentId=wAPgdiJNHsYewmrzi