If you're wondering why everything in society outside of technology is getting worse and being replaced with cheap substitutes, you need to look at the money itself.
Read Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street, published in 1873 [1]. It's the treatise by arguably the world's first modern central banker. What makes it neat is it's entirely on the gold standard.
Britain, on the gold standard, still faced each of inflation, bank runs and credit crises. It was an imperial military power almost constantly at war. And yes, its contemporaries lamented its industrial consumerism and rising inequality. (And that's Victorian Britain, mind you!)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Street:_A_Description_...
It turns out that interest rates are still manipulated by banks and governments whether it's gold or something else. The difference is that at least under gold there's constraints and a price to be paid for debasing.