I am quite surprised when you said you were not an entrepreneur and want a normal wage, financial stability, but at the same time have no interest in a rat race. Maybe our definitions of rat race are different:)
My job is kinda boring and it's not too challenging. I probably can do my weekly work in one day a week so I'm far from stressed. I also don't have any ambition for a higher-level job because this one pays enough to get by. I work in IT (in house) as architect. My yearly reviews are still above average. So I'm pretty good :)
Where I live, the culture has lost that sense of pride and it’s awful. Things are expensive and the quality of service/product I get in return is awful.
My point being, competition and ambition aren’t correlated to the quality of work delivered.