Where is the progress?

Grains and vegetables can sumptuously feed a man and animals, and a fatty cow delivers enough milk to supply a man sumptuously with vigor and vitality. If there is enough milk, enough grain, enough fruit, enough cotton, enough silk and enough jewels, then why do people need economic development in the shape of tools and machines? Can tools and machines supply vigor and vitality to men and animals? Can machinery produce grain, fruit and milk, or jewels and silk? Are jewels and silk, along with varieties of foodstuffs prepared with ghee, grain, milk and fruits, not sufficient for man’s pure, luxurious and healthy life? Then what is the need of an artificial luxurious life of cinemas, cars, radio, flesh and hotels? Has this civilization produced anything more than the doggish mentality of quarreling individually and nationally? Has this civilization enhanced the cause of equality and fraternity by sending thousands of men into a hellish factory and the war fields at the whims of a particular man?

Srimad Bhagavatam 1.10.4 purport