Historical reasons are always arbitrary. Because it's arbitrary to keep an old law that's past its usefulness alive. I understand attempts like Amish, where there is a clear social goal, but in Orthodox Judaism it's nowhere near as clear. It feels like a culture isolate kept to be a culture. This was important when the diaspora was new, dispersed and persecuted.

Prohibitions against work were made because Jewish people have been exploited to exhaustion by enslaving Egyptians and additionally to make a day for worship. It's self-serving, though. not altogether bad. The exact rules made were quite arbitrary though, less exacting rules suffice to keep a day off and as "work" gets easier, the prohibitions should be delicately relaxed without essentially cheating around strict letter.

The thing about both (some) Amish and (most) Orthodox Jews is the scorched earth approach. If they wanted to prevent the problem such as the excess, there are better solutions like limits. Time and amount.