"This is not the place to reckon up the net gains and absolute losses that came about through the unrestricted process of mechanization. There are, indeed, not enough data to support even gross guesses until, in a few countries after the eighteenth century, the statistics of births and deaths and diseases, of industrial output and consumption, become available. How indeed can one compare a mainly handicraft polytechnics, whose slow rate of production is matched by an equally slow rate of consumption, with a system that matches its extraordinary output of energy and goods with equally rapid consumption and destruction: that indeed deliberately forces consumption or waste, through incessant, superficial changes of fashion, of otherwise durable goods? If the first was in fact inherently a scarcity economy, how was it that it could afford to put so much energy into works of art and religion, that it could waste so much manpower in war, that the wealthy could retain such large armies of retainers and menials?
All this would indicate, not technical insufficiency, but rather the fatal absence of a just system of distribution: a conclusion that is re-enforced by Benjamin Franklin's estimate, well before megatechnics had taken hold, that if work and reward and consumption standards were more evenly distributed, a five hour day would suffice to supply all human needs. If, on the other hand, the machine economy has now transcended these limitations, how is it that in the United States more than a quarter of the population lacks an income sufficient to provide a minimum standard of living?
Of only one fact we may be sure; and this is that although the material resources of the world have been immensely increased by our high-energy technology, the net gain has not been nearly as great as is usually reckoned, when the constant factor of wanton waste, premature obsolescence, organic deterioration through environmental pollution and depletion, and premature death by war and genocide are taken into account."
–extract from The Pentagon of Power,
Lewis Mumford, 1964