The Ornithopter

I think that more than a grander world, I would want a world that is Other in just the right way -- a world that is congruent to me in the sense of my creatures.

True, it would be very nice to have economy go away into that realm of utopia so I could focus on my ideas. But in the choice between this world, exactly alike but with that barrier removed, and a world different enough that it would fit me... well, I would have to think long and hard about it.

Yet there is something to what you say. It may be that present conditions hide the true wealth of the current world (even though those conditions are, in a sense, part of that world). And perhaps, as Tangy mentions, we use fiction to show those fantastic aspects that would otherwise be hidden. But then I would say that the problem resides in that which constrains our perception or limits us so that those aspects seem hidden in the first place.