There are worse fates than living in the suburbs, lol, what? If the experience seems bland remember it's not an infrastructure 'problem' but a demographics one. And bland beats ghetto -> warzone.
You can easily opt out of consumerism, they haven't made it illegal yet! Of course, if your life has mostly just consisted of 'going from little kids' toys to bigger boi toys', that's vacuous and depressing but, again, it's a personal decision.
Car-centric cities and infrastructure is a result of greed and bribes. An argument can be made that capitalist societies more easily push people into antisocial selfishness though, of course.
Retirement homes are, again, a 'skill issue' that's very prevalent in certain well known communities and almost nonexistent everywhere else. Raise and love your kids and be family oriented and one of them will take care of you (as it happened to my grandma, and it'll happen to my mom and MIL, and I assume, God willing, to my wife after my passing). Again, I don't know how much of this behaviour can be ascribed to capitalism.