Why having everything isn’t enough anymore?

There is a growing claim in global debates today that modern societies are breaking down because they have become too wealthy. 

Once material scarcity faded, the argument goes, people lost purpose. Comfort bred anxiety. Abundance hollowed out meaning.

At first glance, this sounds persuasive. Recent critiques point to uncomfortable symptoms in advanced economies. 

People are heavier, more digitally addicted, more isolated. Mental health pressures are rising. 

Fewer people marry, form families, or participate in community life. Productivity growth has slowed, social mobility feels tighter, trust in institutions has weakened, and confidence in democratic systems has frayed. 

Some conclude that democratic capitalism has run its course. That conclusion is premature.

The idea that our economic system has stopped delivering ignores what is happening right in front of us. Innovation is not stagnating. 

Medical breakthroughs are transforming how chronic and life-threatening diseases are treated. New therapies are extending healthy lifespans. 

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping how work is done, and even cautious analysts expect it to lift productivity meaningfully over the coming decade.

More importantly, the claim that wealthy societies are “falling apart” collapses under historical comparison. Today’s societies are healthier, safer, and better informed than at most points in history. 

Life expectancy is recovering after the pandemic shock. Long-term death rates from heart disease have plunged. 

Violent crime, after decades of decline, remains far below historical peaks. Access to education, information, travel, and leisure has expanded beyond anything earlier generations could imagine.

Perspective matters. Societies were far poorer and far more unstable in earlier eras often romanticised as morally stronger. 

Civil wars, mass violence, and political terror erupted not in times of excess, but amid scarcity, inequality, and weak institutions. 

At the global level, the 2010s were both wealthier and more stable than the 1910s. Material progress has not made societies uniquely fragile. What is really happening is a shift in the nature of our challenges.

As basic needs become more widely met, attention naturally turns to deeper questions. How do people live meaningful lives? How do communities stay cohesive? How do freedom, leisure, and choice get used well rather than wasted? 

These questions feel sharper today because economic growth has created the space to ask them, not because growth has failed.

It is also mistaken to think that material security and the search for meaning occur in separate phases. They happen at the same time. 

Families work to build income and stability while also trying to raise children well, care for one another, and live with dignity. Economic pressure and moral aspiration coexist in every society, rich or poor.

Nor has the struggle for subsistence disappeared. What counts as a “basic necessity” expands over time. 

In earlier centuries, even the wealthiest could die from conditions now easily treated. In 2026, living at a socially acceptable minimum requires access to healthcare, education, connectivity, and security, all of which carry rising costs. 

The economic challenge does not end. It evolves. Two truths can sit comfortably together. Compared to our ancestors, we live in extraordinary material abundance. And we often fail to live as wisely and well as we could. 

But the first did not cause the second. Every civilisation has wrestled with how to live well, regardless of its level of wealth.

For Malaysia, this distinction matters. Our task is not to reject growth or markets out of frustration. 

It is to understand that economic progress creates opportunity, not purpose by itself. Purpose must still be cultivated through culture, institutions, families, faith, and a shared sense of responsibility.

Material progress is not the problem. It simply shifts the real work onto us.