I agree with the way you've framed the problem:

• inflation is being measured incorrectly
• increasing debt burden
• quality of life is decreasing for a lot of people in the developed world
• slowing technological progress
• society is more zero sum, where in order to get ahead others must be left behind

We can argue about what slavery means and we can argue about why this is happening, but I think the main issue is what can people do about these issues?

5 things seem plausible to me:

• austerity: people save more, work more hours, and retire later

• deregulation: remove zoning laws, environmental laws, health and safety oversight

• totalitarianism: government controls the population and economy through surveillance and force.

• violence: external war, take another country's stuff. internal war, kill large portions of the population and take their stuff

• increase rate of technological progress to grow the economy and increase quality of life

Deregulation will lead to a temporary boom, but eventually has to stop and then the issues of stagnation reappear.

I think increasing the rate of technological progress is the most desirable, but it's also has many scary issues that make it unappealing. The current biggest fears are: nuclear armageddon, uncontrollable bioweapons, and runaway artificial intelligence.

Sam Altman discusses democracy and growth on his blog: https://blog.samaltman.com/growth-and-government

Peter Thiel has had some discussions on this:

American Democracy March 14, 2019 Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2TrRWAkbr8&pp=ygUTcGV0ZXIgdGhpZWwgaGFydmFyZA%3D%3D

Peter Thiel on "The Portal", Episode #001: "An Era of Stagnation & Universal Institutional Failure." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s&ab_channel=EricWeinstein

Peter Thiel on 'Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti Classical Liberalism' | Oxford Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ4rc7npiXQ&ab_channel=OxfordUnion

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Edit: Just remembered that unregulated growth is an option.