> No to mention the fact that all the cancer drugs in the world will not save us from an asteroid. If we don't get people living and populating on other planets, the human species is doomed.

This is what I always come back to. Curing cancer is a great form of self improvement for the human race, but essentially that's like an ant colony learning how to make it's ants live a little longer. It doesn't protect from floods, or fires, or even an exterminator. What does? founding new ant colonies in different locations. Many of them.

Additionally, the caveman analogy is apt. A balance needs to be struck between advancement, and standard of living. Too much focus on standard of living and you reach the cap of what your technology is capable of. To much focus on advancement and people suffer unduly (and too much of that is unsustainable). To me, the parallels between this and the whole socialism and capitalism extremes are obvious, and similarly, we're best off with some shifting middle ground rather than at the extremes.