Dani Rodrik writes: In mid-December, the United Nations will launch the latest of its annual landmark Human Development Reports. This year’s report focuses on the nature of work: how the way we earn a living is being transformed by economic globalization, new technologies, and innovations in social organization. The outlook for developing countries, in particular, is decidedly mixed.

For most people most of the time, work is mostly unpleasant. Historically, doing lots of backbreaking work is how countries have become rich. And being rich is how some people get the chance to do more pleasant work.

Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, new technologies in cotton textiles, iron and steel, and transportation delivered steadily rising levels of labor productivity for the first time in history. First in Britain in the mid-eighteenth century, and then in Western Europe and North America, men and women flocked from the countryside to towns to satisfy factories’ growing demand for labor.

But, for decades, workers gained few of the benefits of rising productivity.

Eventually, capitalism transformed itself and its gains began to be shared more widely.

Democracy, in turn, tamed capitalism further. Employment conditions improved as state-mandated or negotiated arrangements led to reduced working hours, greater safety, and family, health, and other benefits. Public investment in education and training made workers both more productive and freer to exercise choice.

Labor’s share of the enterprise surplus rose. While factory jobs never became pleasant, blue-collar occupations now enabled a middle-class standard of living, with all its consumption possibilities and lifestyle opportunities.  Work