A lot of people have no purpose in their life beyond consumption. Truly, this is it.
If people put the tiniest fraction of work into their fitness, their personality, their intelligence or any other character-building activity or experience instead of working away to buy trinkets and tokens of vapid displays of wealth, we may actually get somewhere as a species.
Exercising is hard, as is resisting junk food, as is reading a book compared to watching TV, or throwing yourself into a new situation. It's so much easier to not do that stuff, sit in an office and collect a paycheck and redirect that money towards things we think make us better than each other.
Personally, I'm way more impressed with the people I know who run 100km+ a week, workout hard and study hard, than people who walk around wearing designer clothes or showing off the things they've bought. The latter sounds sort of pathetic.