Although I don't advocate living like the Amish, I think that reality is mostly not like what you describe. Only a TINY percentage of office or factory workers

Although I don't advocate living like the Amish, I think that reality is mostly not like what you describe. Only a TINY percentage of office or factory workers are really working on problems related to farming, food, or "satisfying basic necessities" problems. Most are working on problems much higher on the Maslow hierarchy of needs - for example, a LOT of work is devoted to advertising, and very often I believe it's zero-sum. A lot of other resources are devoted to entertainment, government, finances, etc. Heck, agriculture is less 2% of the U.S. GDP.