As long as the global population is still rising, they will be carnage between competitions. The author and many others might be foresee the (near) future where the global population start declining, maybe then, we can do things just because we can.

Population growth or size has nothing to do.

No matter how much resources a society has, natural selection pushes everyone to keep trying hard to get more, as those that don't end up without resources.

In a society, the fastest way to get resources is to provide something in exchange to other members of the society. The most common thing we have to exchange for resources is work.

From those two things we can see that no matter what society you have or how wealthy it is, people will work as much as they can, or else they get behind in the rat race.