The US and Europe might have lost a lot of craftsmanship knowledge at a social level. Yet, what is left is so far ahead of what has ever existed in countries in South America for example. And China has gained a lot. Witness that youtuber trying to make grill brushes in the US. These differences have an impact in terms of opportunities and competition.
It's easy to sit at home, watch documentaries and picture history progressing along logical lines and imagine that the "industrial revolution" was this massive shift from craftsmanship to automation. Look closer and you'll see that what happened in the UK in the 1700s was in fact enabled by a long and deep tradition of craftsmanship that only got enriched by the rise of new power sources. Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry.
And there is a lot to lose in the decline of craftsmanship, and it is by no means some sort of historical inevitability.
When you really start digging deep into history you realize most arguments of logical trends therein are mostly just misconceptions.
Real craftsmanship, the kind that leaves you in awe and feels like an exceptional display of human capacity, seems to be relegated, from my point of view, to a minority of well-off hobbyists who are already free from work and can do what they want without worrying about paying bills.
yes, but no. Many craft skills used in jewelry, architecture and others are lost. For example, some goldsmithing techniques well-known in the 1700s are not reproducible today.
source: trained goldsmith
I suspect the horses are healthier and stronger than in the 1700s too. I'm not sure I understand your point?
I'd agree that the niche of extremely high quality, bespoke craftsmanship still exists, and that in some cases jobs were augmented by technology rather than entirely replaced, but the point still stands that the work these people used to do has been automated and disrupted by technology.
The fact some people upskilled or reskilled as a response is analogous to coders today. All I'd question is the extent of the disruption we'll see as a result of AI – I worry that this time things will change much more quickly and there may not be plenty of other jobs for people to upskill / reskill in to.
But if that's not true then perhaps whatever software engineering exists in the future will be far more complex than what software engineers have done for the last few decades.
Every random business has some machine that puts caps on bottles or something, and these things are ridiculously better designed, engineered, and fabricated than ever before, because the knowledge and tools available to the designer and fabricator are better than ever before.
You are surrounded by things that are insanely well made by all previous standards. Even the crappy stuff that you don't think of as well-made, because it is junk compared to everything else, still has many aspects that are almost magic.
Horses? I doubt it. They're still infamously fragile creatures today, even with penicillin and vaccinations existing; similarly for strength, not much call for shires and they're now on an "at risk" conservation list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire_horse -> https://www.rbst.org.uk/watchlist-breed/shire-horse/
Possibly also fewer horses in total, though I don't know any stats for that far back and may be over-estimating based on the stats I do have for c. 1900.
Of course the costs are higher too. Good horses in the above category can go for north of $100k.