I believe that what you are advocating would be in practice just as bad as the Easter Island scenario. I am also convinced that it is quite possible to maintain an urban based technological society without getting to that scenario. Take those two together and you can understand why I take such exception to your views, and the other people on this site with similar ones.

is (completely) irrelevant to the subject of rural people being driven off the land.

Please, please read some French history. Concentrate on the Third Republic up to WWI and then again on the Trente Glorieuses that followed WWII. It is the polar opposite of the English case which you seem to think was universal.

You'll find a state which actively sought to promote the political and economic interests of the small farmer at the expense of both the rural elites and the urban population. You'll see extensive measures, administrative, legal, and financial helping out small family farmers. You'll note the disproportionate power of rural areas, coinciding with the rapid demise in the political power of the already relatively weak rural elites. You'll find the rise of a modern industrial economy with little rural exodus to be observed. Then switch over to the post WWII period and you'll find your rural exodus - not because the conditions of the rural areas declined, but because suddenly the government embarked on a large scale effort to improve the lives of the urban working class and petty bourgeoisie - decent housing, running water, electricity, higher wages, shorter working hours. And a rural exodus occurred, but because of a relative decline in living standards, not an absolute one. The last quarter century has been different, but by that point the bulk of the urbanization had already taken place.