When you really think about it, though, it becomes clear that the motivational influences behind technological advancements are 95% irrational greed, power and fame (mostly greed). If you cut away those influences, then technology does not advance nearly as rapidly; thus technology does not exaggerate those influences further; not that there is an easily found and potentially successful method to cut away those tendencies or limit them, anyway, though. I am not even sure you would want to.
If you could limit them to the realm where they are actually needed to survive and prevent them from influencing individuals into going to extremes to satisfy them, then technology could be advanced much more cleanly and with far greater effect. Real issues, the kind that are not driven by greed or fame, could be faced head-on and dissolved in a relatively short period of time if it were not for the distractions of greed, power, fame and the other exaggerated instincts.
The economy is all about using greed and power to develop products that others see as a necessary expansion of their own greed and power. If people were educated enough and had enough self-control, they could exercise these instincts all they wanted in ways that are not massively detrimental to society, and then free the rest of their mind whenever they are not. I think a perfect example is games ? they are all about satisfying your instinctual desire for power/fame/greed in a safe and interesting way, but the self-control steps in when you have to set aside the game long enough to exercise, maintain your body and relationships, etc. and also in not exercising those same instincts while doing those things.
Living comfortably is something everyone on this planet should be able to do, but only when it does not cost another?s happiness and well-being to do so. I am a hypocrite, as most of society is, but I think it is never the less true.
My own irrational greed is always influencing my mind into plotting methods to get more money, nicer things, and my own island with a helicopter someday. Once I have all those things, I will want immortality so that I can spend the rest of eternity gathering every particle of existence under my sphere of influence, so that all of everything is mine alone. I will pack it into something the size of a marble, and still not be content since the limit of my greed will still not have been received, and thus I will implode, then explode, and do it all again. All because my brain has the self-preservation light, that reads ?low? on every want. Damn mechanic in the sky forgot to reset it?