Western civilisation: A success that looks like failure

This reminds me of a really interesting book my parents got me when I was a kid, and which I just got another copy of for my daughter. The book is called "The Third Millennium" and it was a sort of prediction of how science, politics and other factors might evolve and shape the world over the next 1000 years. It's really fascinating, and I'd recommend it to anyone if you can still find a copy. I'm not giving mine up.

In this "future history" at around the year 2800 economists were perplexed at why the metrics they had showed that the economy was slowing down drastically. The explanation that the book gave was that, by the year 2800, we had literally run out of stuff to produce and consume. There wasn't any need for large-scale development on Earth anymore because, to borrow a metaphor, the rising tide had truly lifted all boats. Everywhere on Earth had equal, cheap access to whatever could be made (including interplanetary travel). Productivity that had been getting funnelled into projects like building up the "third world" was suddenly unnecssary. Nobody, whether at a micro or macro level, needed anything else, and from some perspectives that looked like an economic disaster.