I wonder how much we could optimize real world agricultural and industrial processes if we reallocated just a tiny fraction of the energy that goes into this game.

Highly doubt it as games themselves are designed to produce this energy and motivation. It's not like we have super geniuses who are wasting their potential on games, but rather games provide a sandbox that encourage exploration, experimentation, and create intrinsic motivation loops. I feel confident saying that playing games like Factorio is a much better use of time than using social media or passively consuming media.

The real world is filled with industry know-how, real-life constraints, and monetary risk. I'm almost positive these people don't have millions of dollars lying around to invest in agriculture R&D.

Trouble is, these factory games are fairly deterministic and are nowhere near as opaque as the real world.

Kind of like how the Travelling Salesman Problem is near impossible in a static network, it's truly impossible in real life as changing conditions constantly make the solution different, so even an instant answer isn't good enough.

I realize as I'm typing this that your thoughts are almost exactly what the more optimistic Communists thought in the Soviet Union (very laudatory towards you by the way), I really should get around to reading Red Plenty, I have a thing for bureaucratic tragedy.