When I look at things that are slow I see only two things: natural disasters and analysis paralysis. When I look at software employment I see a lots of anxiety at multiple levels. People do and say all kinds of shit to mask their anxiety.
Some are definitely high-anxiety situations: the large-scale ambitious ones in the list were done during a war (or cold war). Many of the others are high-pressure scenarios where I am sure the construction workers had anything but low anxiety. They are typical of an economy which is growing very fast where bad working conditions and accidents are tolerated. It is not unlike condititions in current fast developing countries some with immigrant workers (Quatar) or in China.
Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"