It has been a very long time since I last read BNW, but at the time I read it I felt that that was a very conspicuous tension in the novel. Specifically that our expectations of 20th/21st century people, and our veneration of individualism, were at odds with a society that ostensibly delivered what hoped for in terms of poverty, crime, happiness. Even the rebellious that couldn't live in such a stifling society were shipped off (it was to Iceland right?) to live with other intellectuals and iconoclasts where they would likely be much happier than if they had stayed among the happy masses.