Corporate culture is based on constant growth and ever increasing profit margins. Eventually they’ll amass so much of the wealth that most of the lower class won’t be able to purchase anything other than essentials like food.
No new cars, no tech gadgets, no fancy dinners, no vacations, no disposable income.
When we get there the economy collapses because there’s no money going into it.
The profits stop rolling in, unnecessary goods stop being produced, and the luxury goods producer’s shut down.
At this point the money they worked so hard to hoard becomes worthless because they can’t buy anything with it.
What’s the endgame for them if their current path takes them to a point where their assets are more or less worthless?
They don’t think about endgame. The life they live is one without consequence; they have no intention to start thinking ahead, that’d make them uncomfortable.
Also, this endgame is already manifesting. Remember all those headlines about millennials killing “X” industry? Less wealth in the working class for luxuries that previous generations would have enjoyed at the same age. Before long it’ll be not enough wealth for certain luxuries outright.
There are 3 key necessities for UBI/freedom dividends:
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It redistributes power not wealth. Bad greed is oligarchy capturing your rulers. UBI weakens politicians discretion, because just paying everyone more cash instead of their corrupt ideas is “idiocracy proof”. Power redistributed to workers where everyone who wants a job gets 5 recruiter calls per day offering a better job. We all get greater power to say no to anything. Quality of life becomes exceptional without crimes of desperation, and the divisive hate that is easily manufactured from crime.
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Redistribution means massive economic growth and overall prosperity even as it all trickles up to make the rich richer. “Velocity of money” is the key economic concept, but as income trickles back up to workers and owners, it means that the rich have to invest more to take all of our money.
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The alternative is genocide. Oligarchy having all of the money and power, and AI/robotics to do work, means robocop detroit for Americans, and war on rest of the world to take their land. It doesn’t matter that far more wealth can be generated with more people to sell stuff to. The logic of pillaging America/world for oligarchs with ever decreasing tax rates on corporations and the rich means more relative wealth and power for the oligarchy and its political minions.
This 3rd point is similar to yours. Except its not just “This is America, if you don’t make money you’re a douchebag”, and the rich just give up on life, it’s “you need to be exterminated because you are useless to the rulership.”
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If they thought as effectively as the question in the title, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.
The same as with all cancers unless it’s killed in time.
It’s even better than that, because the massive inequality created by Capitalism has already got us to a state where the human population is going to collapse within the next few decades, even if climate change doesn’t do it first. Simply, most people never feel like they can afford to start a family during the years when they would have started one before. The oligarchs know this and are freaking out about birth rates now, but it’s already too late - can’t be King of the mountain if the mountain is only a hill.
There’s a solution for reducing population while increasing birthrates: war, pandemias and forced inoculations (physically or by peer pressure).
Don’t forget banning abortion and birth control through moral and legal processes. Time to give birth to the next generation of disposable exploitation.
Why would they do any of that when they could simply use HAARP to trigger a Mandela Effect and change reality though? Seems like hard work.
/s, right?
Right?
What’s the endgame for them if their current path takes them to a point where their assets are more or less worthless?
Get too rich, too powerful, burn the earth, and die happy before the consequences of their behavior catch up with them.
No, they won’t be happy. They’ll be desperately trying to convince themselves they are, though.
Have you noticed the rich are suddenly encouraging people to have (more) kids? It’s the only way to put more labor into the system. And labor is what money really represents.
The rich are stealing your labor.
It’s not the only way. We’ve been relying on immigration to do this for us for a long time. American politics is struggling with the tension between racist idiots who don’t understand that immigrants are crucial to our economy, and those who do understand it. You can not be racist AND not understand it and that is fine too, no problem.
maybe something akin to hungergames to keep masses under control
I don’t think we will get to that level. It doesn’t make sense financially. I mean sure, replace people with robots will happen but it’s a long way from happening right now.
For a while it will be that they only have almost all of the money; a small portion will have to go to the workers so that someone exists to run things like power plants and farms and mcdonalds and shit. But eventually robots will replace all that, or slavery
You’re supposed to recognize their undisputed superiority and turn yourselves into automatons for their pleasure, having no other options available to you.
Of course that never actually works, as it always ends up with someone like Moses or Jesus figuring out that you can, in fact, live perfectly fine in this world without their economic systems. As long as you’re willing to deal with the natural world directly.
Except this time we’re so far along that the natural world itself is a victim.
It gets harder and harder to reject the system and “live a simple life”.
Rural areas are food deserts claimed by give factory farms. Cities force you into the grind through high rent. Alternative livestyles are criminalized. Emigrating requires lots of money and there are no frontiers left to live the rugged way.Yup. It’s going to suck a lot.
That still won’t ever make their stupid idea actually function in reality. They’re far too dumb to directly control everyone’s lives.
Feudalism
Eventually they’ll amass so much of the wealth that most of the lower class won’t be able to purchase anything other than essentials like food.
What’s the logic here? Someone else having a high net worth, means that you have less money?
Wealth is finite, so yes.
It isn’t? It’s created and destroyed all of the time.
“Created” meaning stolen from labor that is undercompensated, or just outright stolen. “Destroyed” meaning the purported wealth was never real in the first place.
Wealth is defined by resources: access to resources, and ownership of resources. Resources are finite; wealth is finite.
There are plenty of resources in the world to comfortably support all of the people living in the world right now, plus many, many more. Those who own or have access to resources are wealthy. Those who do not, are not.
Those who control the resources extend that control over people who need resources. If there were no people who didn’t have a deficit of resources, then there would also be no people exerting social control based on control of resources.
To accomplish that, most of the resources that the wealthy control must be removed from their control, shifting that control equitably among all. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, one might say.
“Created” meaning stolen from labor that is undercompensated, or just outright stolen. “Destroyed” meaning the purported wealth was never real in the first place.
Creates as in a dude cooks a burger. Destroyed as in someone eats it.
No theft involved.
Not destroyed, merely transformed. Human waste can be turned into fertilizer. Still no theft in sight…
Under the premise that eventually this endless growth cycle reaches some kind of an end point, then ultimately yes. The wealth has to keep increasing somehow. When you have have saturated every market, eliminated every competitor, captured every last regulator, innovated every last facet, optimised every metric, you have to start cutting wages, or replacing labour with machines. When evey worker is replaced or the wages are less than enough for survival no one’s getting paid. Who buys the stuff?
Under the premise that eventually this endless growth cycle
Exactly. It’s endless, so the premise is false. At a certain point they’ll just rename 100 dollar the neodollar, and it continues. It’s just bookkeeping, there’s no end.
I see it as a frenzy, like a mob trying to scoop up cash as fast as they can that was strewn across the highway by a wrecked security truck. No logic, no thought, just an addict without any controls.
If all the billionaires in the world instantaneously ceased to exist, and all their money were evenly distributed to everyone on earth, you would get a one time payment of about $1,769. Then what?
With the exchange rates remaining intact? Many people would live a much better life.
We move on to the triple digit millionaires, and maybe the double digit millionaires too.
You’re forgetting that this money would exchange hands multiple times per year, per person. Expenses are revenues; we’re all connected.
But when some people put billions aside (in non tangible stuff like stocks), they’re effectively reducing the buying power of everyone else. Slowly but surely. They are a net negative just by their mere existence.
