Neo-liberalism

One of the things I really dislike about living in North America is how consumer-oriented (read: greedy) everyone is.  The goal of the neo-liberal state is is to ensure that it is responding to market needs with the private sector driving political and economic priorities. Definitely this has been instilled in my psyche somewhere, but I dream of simpler times, where economic stability and social equality are the goals of the day. Won't continued economic growth result in some sort of fatal collapse? Isn't this constantly growing entity a bit cancer-like?