Productivity and Population

What is the goal of a civilisation? Is it to maximise production and population? At first thought, this seems to be the goal, since with more productivity come more goods and luxuries. But at what point is it not worth it? Our race is at the most productive ever, due to the new technologies, but are we really much more happy? Perhaps what needs to be done is to work less and enjoy life more - although this could be bad for a civilisation if a more productive civilisation decides to take over a less productive one. I suppose it is all about balance.

What if we take productivity to the extreme? Eliminate all non-human life on Earth other than a few of the most productive crops and human symbionts. Produce all nutrition synthetically, and use the productive crops for calories. Each individual can be allotted a daily portion, perhaps a pre-mixed drink containing all the daily nutrition requirements, plus some drugs to keep the individual comfortable and content for the day. Saving the energy for human use rather than having it being wasted on life on Earth that does not contribute to human production will help increase production to extremely high levels. With more people (all controlled and made content by drugs), the amount of new ideas generated will also increase. Would this be a bad society? Why or why not? If everyone is happy and productive, is this the perfect society? Other than happiness, productivity, and fertility, what else is necessary for the human experience? Although this hypothetical society satisfies all of those points, something doesn't seem quite right about it - what is the missing element?

On the other hand, perhaps we only think it's wrong because we grew up in our society - what would people from a society like the hypothetical one outlined above think about our society? Would they view us in the same way we view cavemen? Would cavemen view our society with the same discomfort that we view the above hypothetical society? After all, our society use drugs excessively all the time to make us happy and comfortable, such as pain killers, alcohol and tobacco. Our society have eliminated, or are trying to eliminate life forms that get in our way, such as smallpox, malaria, mosquitoes, etc. Our society have selected only a small number of productive crops to maintain, while letting the majority of less productive plants and animal species become crowded out by the life forms that we have chosen to be most productive for human life.

What is the right balance, what should we be aiming for, and where are we headed?