The current economic crisis sheds light on some serious shortcomings in the socio-anthropological view at the foundation of the capitalist modern project as it pursues its ideal of autonomy and material prosperity for the great majority of people. Moving from Arendt's and Simmel's critical notes on individualism and consumption, the authors show that the process of economic expansion through individual liberation on the one side and the systemic exploitation of desires through consumption on the other ended up in a condition of personal discontent and collective inequality that threatens the very possibility of prosperity and autonomy for many. Finally, they expose a different vision of individual freedom, one that can constitute a more reliable socio-anthropological ground upon which a much-needed new model of growth may be built.