In this case they're deliberately poisoning people. It has very little to do with civilization or technology. The bulk of humanity is meant to be agrarian and more or less to terraform the land.
We have a huge wasted effort problem. When products are designed to break or malfunction because replacement/repeat consumption is the profitable model, or non-competitive regulation is the profitable model to maintain the scale of monopolies, or population employment is threatened by automation and innovation and population employment is necessary to maintain civilization due to tax / utilities burdens and consumer goods demand... Those are modern lifestyle problems.
Being poisoned on a massive scale is something else. That's not civilization growing pains, it's just straight up murder.
In this case they're deliberately poisoning people. It has very little to do with civilization or technology. The bulk of humanity is meant to be agrarian and more or less to terraform the land.
We have a huge wasted effort problem. When products are designed to break or malfunction because replacement/repeat consumption is the profitable model, or non-competitive regulation is the profitable model to maintain the scale of monopolies, or population employment is threatened by automation and innovation and population employment is necessary to maintain civilization due to tax / utilities burdens and consumer goods demand... Those are modern lifestyle problems.
Being poisoned on a massive scale is something else. That's not civilization growing pains, it's just straight up murder.