And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society that require exchanging what you've produced for something produced by others. Like, say, the computing device that you used to post your opinion.
Trouble is finding a better opportunity. From personal experience, my small acreage and old equipment, on average, nets me half of my developer income for just a couple of weeks per year of work. That's really hard to compete with. What else are you going to do instead?
It doesn't scale in the sense that if I put in more time I won't make more money, but the nice thing about small farms is that time commitment is also small. Fantastic income relative to the time commitment, and still leaves you the ability to do other things the rest of the year.
That is a very high hourly wage. Wow.
But not all decisions are purely financial.
That said, you can leverage the debt. It is much harder to get someone to loan you money to invest in index funds. With the huge run-up in asset values over the past decade, I expect the farmer with a small holding 10 years ago, who then bought up everything he could with the bank's money, is now considerably further ahead than he who invested the same amount of money in index funds 10 years ago and took a job at Walmart to try and top up those investments.
But you are right that not all decisions are financial. I expect the Walmart job is far less stressful and that is worth quite a bit.
Not everyone evaluates their life choices like an arid economist.
In particular, not everyone would regard leaving an outdoor lifestyle for sitting at a desk all day at someone's beck and call an "oppirtunity"
> And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society
Actually, in many places it is possible to operate a small farm without being destitute. The point is that all the "nicities" are particularly necessary, and outside of education and healthcare you can get by ok buying second hand and mending and making do.
Heck, even the homeless have mobile phones, so your example is pretty poor