Knowledge is leverage. Leverage works as interest upon interest. Therefore gradual non-improvement is the same as rapid decline. Loosing 3 percent a year where everybody is standing still is not that different as standing still in a world where everybody is accumulating interest.

Also what I have noticed with myself ( I had a decadent phase in life, moved on and now look on "friends" who stayed where they were) - decadent consumerism might not look as bad when you start doing it. But it erodes your soul it makes you weak and timid. Arm the lumpenproletariat with high tech - and you won't get "a little bit weaker" society - you get idiocracy.

A human to be happy must play hard, work hard and love hard. This is a virtue that most everybody is abandoning these days. I'm not advocating for repression (like China, India or western world of old), I'm advocating that we don't forget a passion in our lives and that we do not fail to show it to our children. Else everything is in vain.