"Progress" often makes life worse, but we claw back quality of life.
The history of civilization has seen a number of innovations completely change the human way of life. Each major change creates enormous real wealth, but also comes at a great cost to health and well-being.
For example, the shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural way of life created a giant leap in food security, and enabled us to build large, permanent, useful buildings, villages, and cities. The existence of currency and trade centers allowed us to become more specialized in our work, leading to greater efficiency and higher quality goods.
