Nothing but workers and consumers?

I just saw this interesting opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. Is our culture really pushing us to be nothing more than workers and consumers? We are constantly told how we must balance our lives - focus on work and consumption, and a bit of love/family/intimacy when we can fit it in. But I wonder if there is another way - less work and less consumption, and less need to schedule in the love/family/intimacy? Could our culture pull it off on a large scale, or are we so dominated by the consumer driven economy that society as we know it would disintegrate if we dared to put a higher priority on human relationships than the market?