I think the analogies you make to other types of sales aren't terribly strong. Walking through a brick and mortar store without buying anything takes effectively no time from the business - they can handle many customers in parallel. By contrast, calling prospective business or test driving a car does involve at least acknowledging the seller. You might not tell them you've bought a different car, but you also don't hear the proposed price and hang up the phone without a word, which is a closer analogy to getting an offer and replying with nothing, not even a form letter.
I think you're overestimating what applicants are expecting here. Obviously a form rejection opens up a lot of problems, but a form acknowledgement doesn't share those issues. Something as simple as "Thank you for your resume, we will review it and contact you if it appears that we may have a position suitable for you." Stress on the "will review" so that it's clear the applicant hasn't been considered yet, favorably or otherwise.
In particular, I consider this worthwhile for resumes submitted at various career fairs. The process employed there frequently comes down to handing over a paper resume and being told "Thank you for your resume, we'll digitize it and put it into our system." This is far from reassuring, particularly after the first few times you get clear proof that your resume was never digitized at all. A form note simply acknowledging the submission provides your applicants with confidence that their resume is truly in your possession and a better feeling than applying to a black hole.
I think your critique is using a major false equivalence. I don't see any suggestion in the article that keeping someone from working from home is on par with forcing them to take Adderall. Instead, both were being held up as examples when discussing the question of what changes employers ask you to make in your life to create productivity. I agree that the Adderall example was hyperbolic and the article would probably be stronger without it, but I don't think any moral equivalence was being asserted.
As to your last point, you don't get paid to be productive (necessarily). You're paid to provide work, and different jobs have different metrics for that. There are for instance substantial differences between salary, hourly wage, and commission work - someone being paid a flat fee for a project has no obligation to be efficient or productive, only to fulfill their stated terms. Diminishing efficiency in favor of happiness is a perfectly reasonable aim, particularly in certain jobs.
