That is a really good point. Perhaps one could compare it to creating and driving an car from the 1920's, and trying to satisfy all the regulations around cars nowadays.

On the other hand, I do think that combination of extreme scarcity leading to government regulation is so out of line with how the world is moving, that it reflects flawed thinking. It's almost as if people want some kind of crises to escape the decadence of modern capitalism (and there are as many on the right who think this way). The only thing that could create this kind of scarcity is global warming. But maybe the reference to a farmer on the arctic circle was a reference to this?