More study needed, that's all I can say. The benefits of mass production are cheap, decent quality goods with relatively low skilled work (once the production line is actually set up -- that requires a lot of planning). I'm not sure how one would conduct an experiment to show that modern workers suffer more psychological stress than cottage industry workers. The main thing is to actually test the hypothesis -- not state an untested theory as fact.

If it's true (which I actually have strong reason to believe) -- how do we use that information to improve worker satisfaction ... without hugely increasing costs or decreasing productivity? The main problem seems to be that people in a production line see only what they actually do -- involving them in the rest of production would be expensive in training time.

Consider as well that no one is forced to work these factory type jobs. One could go into a trade, carpentry for example, on one's own ... but one just can't compete on the market that way (unless the quality is super high). The vast majority of people just want cheap things -- the quality of the workmanship and material comes second ... or maybe, the vast majority of people feel they can only afford cheap things ... or they prefer to spend their money on other things, entertainment and drugs, say. Perhaps because they themselves are just as alienated?

But humans have been spending as much time as possible on entertainment and drugs for as long as we've been around. Even monkeys like to get drop-dead drunk.

Do you know what happened to the mentally ill before modern times?