Your concerns are true, but I'm not sure if this answers the question above. After all, the shift to service economies started a very long time before the crisi

Your concerns are true, but I'm not sure if this answers the question above. After all, the shift to service economies started a very long time before the crisis ramped up to what it's like today. And even today, under a crust of rent-seeking businesses, circular investing and outright scams, there's plenty of quiet, boring businesses that provide actually important and relevant services. It can (and probably will) still get so, so, so much worse than this. So clearly, there's more factors in play here that made most of the first world transition to providing services, since we weren't remotely close to running out of ways to extract and sell goods then (and still aren't, not yet).