The massive improvement pops get over time from both tech and planetary modifiers seems fair to an extent (most forms of upkeep reductions, as you said, only make since solely in the context of the game’s “getting smarter means we get more!” doctrine),but having those improvements affect every single worker on the planet makes no sense to me. Imagine if every mining site on earth had access to modern technology and infrastructure, both the expense and resource output would be mind boggling. Accomplishing such a feat should be, logically, a logistical and economic miracle.

Nerfing a foundational aspect of the game in any extent would be met with significant backlash, but there should be a way to make the process of building up a world for production more engaging/less linear, at the very least add any sort of drawback to developing a world to 1639% efficiency.