I think you kind of have this turned on its head in that exploring passions is a natural outcome of our current labor productivity when the actual thing that is

I think you kind of have this turned on its head in that exploring passions is a natural outcome of our current labor productivity when the actual thing that is the problem is under control rather than out of control and that is abusing market power for rent seeking purposes. Housing costs have gotten out of control because people who own houses lobby for regulatory changes that increase the value of their assets and this is just one small subset of the regulatory rent seeking abuse going on today making it expensive to live even though labor productivity is very high. Same thing with the black death in the middle ages. Killing a huge portion of the population while leaving almost all the capital in tact made labor valuable and capital cheap and labor used their new ascendence to roll back some of the most heinous abuses of the pre black death era. With the new found rights labor had a higher chance of keeping the proceeds from innovation they came up with and so innovation ensued. Same thing with post WWII. In this case the old world was completely crushed putting humanity on a more equal level than it has probably ever been and this combined with post enlightenment thinking on equality, human rights and American Libertarianism to let a whole new batch of billionaires grow out of providing services to humanity that were in demand (who then invested in rent seeking themselves putting us where we are today).