There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.
But did you ever wonder what happened to the displaced workers? I'm not an expert on the agricultural changes in the USA, but in the UK, huge amount of tumult can be directly attributed to agricultural changes.
The displaced workers went on to do other things. In the last 100 years for those very workers who "lost" their jobs to mechanization the overall standard of life for ALL american no matter how you measure it it better. There's fewer people living in poverty, people live longer lives, better infrastructure, and no widespread famine in the US I am aware of.
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck is largely about this concept. If these social transitions were as rosy as you paint them I think the book would be called Grapes of Pleasant Improvements in Living Standards.
It took me a long time to come around to simplifying it all to sugar. Its not the only reason of course but my mind now thinks: There are other countries like ours, except not everyone is fat. Sugar bypasses our normal satiety - you can put dessert and sugary drinks on top of a regular diet, easier than you can a second or third serving of the entree. Sugar is cheap and an easy way to make money in the food business. And we have sugar factories galore selling candy disguised as coffee. Add one coke a day to a balanced diet, and you add 5-10lb of fat to a person per year.
My bias is now simply, its the sugar. No not only. But far and away the number one culrpit.
not only just sugar but high fructose corn syrup in particular. and yes, I know they're both basically metabolized the same but one is more likely to cause inflammation than the other. and the fact that it's dirt cheap compared to cane sugar makes it more likely to end up in our food at an affordable price. unlike other countries, we substitute sugar with corn syrup and the use of hfcs correlates to the increased obesity we've seen in the past few decades no matter how the ag lobby tries to rationalize otherwise.
Think most people do get this. More technology, more growth and innovation is fantastic and people see the benefits (even its taken for granted at times). The problem is the in-between stage between new technology and huge society ramifications which, rationally, people should be concerned with. If you fall on the right side of that on the other side, great but many don't and that's happened time after time. Society doesn't move in a straight line up despite what lots of condensed charts say - collateral damage occurs
I understand the spirit of this, but most of this alarmism is misguided in my view.