I got started with my first computer as a child over 40 years ago. I'll take the Wild West over the Matrix any day.

That's an interesting contrast, in that the Wild West is a halfway house for Civil War burnouts and the Matrix is a deliberately and expensively constructed and maintained, largely successfully hyperreal (in the original sense, ie so convincing that whether it's 'real' ceases to be either distinguishable or meaningful) simulacrum of what the Wachowskis were astute enough in its own historical moment to recognize as the highwater mark of American hegemony.

Oh, the Matrix is also parasitic, certainly; before it was smoothed over for mass appeal it was I think a story much more obviously inspired by They Live, the central conceit being that the system both runs on and exploits human neural cognitive capacity, ie the brains are the thing being farmed as components of the Machines' own computers, with the rest of the human (including consciousness and experience!) basically tolerated as the best available life support system for the 500 grams or so of brain tissue that's actually worth having. But a cow can live a long and happy life on a farm, be genuinely loved, and still end up as cutlets. Looking at it even from Daisy's end, how unjust can we honestly call that deal?

For you and me, the gunslinger's life has a decided appeal, sure. If that and Buy-n-Large World are the only two options on the table - which so far they have been, though I agree the real answer is to add a better third - can we really say that, for everyone, the Matrix isn't the less worse of the two?