Sure, because the trade off wasn't real. There is a whole market full of people who could've done that work, it didn't have to the exact person who did it who happened to be one of the ones who would have gone to the other project, and the market expands when there is more demand because supply comes to meet it.

So the trade off wasn't between physics and software. We could've had both of those at the "cost" of fewer divorce lawyers or lower unemployment, neither of which are actually costs.

There is a theoretical point where having people do physics is less productive than having them do anything else they might've done, but we're nowhere near it. We still have people working in advertising only to cancel out the work of other people working in advertising.