I would say the lesson for us all is that the elite cannot be trusted to look after the little man when the paradigm gets busted.
The enclosure acts in England, the Highland clearances, the creation of a dependency on the potato in Ireland leading to the ensuing famine after the blight struck: These events all show the ruling classes engineered the circumstances leading to massive migrations. It is not just Ireland that suffered, although the dependence on the potato and the blight made the situation in Ireland far more severe. To argue it was or was not a famine or a catastrophe is to merely argue semantics. The facts are in the public domain and cannot be denied.
The present day erosion of liberty and employment in the west is beginning to show some very uncomfortable parallels with the recent past. To say that the study of history is futile would seem to revel in ignorance of both the past and the future. You might as well stick your head in a bucket of sand, but beware that reality does not kick you up the ******.