Because through physical coercion you could control natural resources. If you could control natural resources and compel people to labor, you could control wealth. And while not providing the happiest or most productive or workers, it worked well enough. The second industrial revolution, however, the one that is now in progress, is based on machines that extend, multiply and leverage not our physical but our mental abilities. A remarkable aspect of this new technology is that it uses almost no natural resources.
Silicon chips use infinitesimal amounts of sand and other readily available materials.
They use insignificant amounts of electricity. It's a fortunate truth of human nature that whereas labor can be forced, creativity and innovation cannot be. The exponential progress being created through Moore's Law and the move towards an economy based on knowledge and intellectual property is a permanent revolution. It is a continual paradigm shift, and to understand how to revitalize a company or a country with significant technology assets, one needs to understand how that technology will fit into not just the world of today, but the world one year from now, and two years from now, which will be very different. History is full of missed paradigm shifts.