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?
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
inoculationsinseminations (physically or by peer pressure).Edit: I’m not an antivaxxer, that’s just idiotic. I’m talking antiabortion and religion.
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?
And I’m downvoted versus an actual anti-vaxxer? What a world.
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.
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.
The end game is 1 person with all of it.
What’s the end game for cancer?
There isn’t one, it doesn’t matter that the host dies eventually as long as they get to keep growing for now.
This is the answer. These people have no plan other than “make more money today”.
Live, laugh, love.
Live in the moment.
YOLO!
🤮
Eloquently phrased.
The billionaire space race reminds me of Devil facial tumour disease (NSFL).
It’s the only cancer (that I know of), that can reliably spread to a new host.Edit: I did some reading, there are more but that is the one that feels most terrifying. I posted the article on creepy Wikipedia.
The endgame is feudalism.
It’s not about money, it’s about controlling everything through the scam that is private ownership.
They’ll happily lend you money to keep buying stuff. So you end up in perpetual debt. It loops back to feudalism and serfdom in a deliciously ironic twist.
So what’s the way out, you propose?
What is cancer’s endgame when it spreads to the rest to the rest of the body?
They aren’t planning for the future of humanity, they just want their numbers to go up.
It’s exactly this mentality. They DO NOT CARE what happens at the end, because they are assuming they’ll be either dead or in AI bunkers by then. Everyone else will be left to burn.
It’s just like Big Oil (or insert massive scale business with environmental consequences) - they’re making the world inhabitable. As the consequences don’t “immediately” matter to them , all they care about is the immediate future, not long term. But it still makes no sense to me.
Their actions don’t make rational sense to you because you’re not a sociopathic CEO beholden to the whims of shareholders. Otherwise, you nailed it.
There is no end game. They’re hungry ghosts.
They just want an ever increasing “more”
THIS. I believe even if they think the climate is changing and will kill everyone, they will somehow be immune.
The rich would celebrate while we drown
This isn’t unique to the “hungry ghosts”.
Our behaviors are really quite simple. It has been shown a few times that our logical explanations for how we decide on our behavior are mostly rationalizations after the decision has been made, not actual reasons. I.e. like you say, we want more, then we find an explanation why we would want more.
For example, someone likes a new phone because it’s shiny and new, and says “why wouldn’t I treat myself once in a while”, “it’s faster which makes me more productive”, “it has X and Y new features which are useful in A and B situations”(which they’ll never encounter), and so on
No, actually, normal people can settle. That doesn’t mean they don’t treat themselves “once in a while” or sometimes crave something special or set new goals when they complete one, but they don’t need more more more all the time. They can have periods of contentment. I know I do.
But there are some people who always want more. They never are satisfied, not even for a second. As soon as they get something they want they’re already bored with it and want the next best thing. It’s a hedonic treadmill that gets faster and faster, they’re never happy.
Yeah of course we can override our desires, I never said anything to the contrary. The difference though is not the existence of the desire, but the lack of overriding it.
Normal people don’t desire more at all times. They’ll be happy for a while before setting their eyes on the next goal.
These hungry ghosts, though, never experience that period of contentment. That moment of happiness where they achieve what they want and can rest never comes, not even for a second. As soon as they get what they want they already want more. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say they don’t even have goals. They only want more.
We would disagree there then. In my opinion the only difference is the situation people are in not allowing them to get more. If you need to work 2 months to get a new phone, gotta be “happy” with it for at least 2 months, and also can’t buy something else new.
If you look at lottery winners, most of them manage to lose all the money relatively quickly.
Most “non-rich” people spend their money they get from working quickly/instantly.
Normal people don’t buy lottery tickets. Hell, normal people can’t save money anymore.
actually, i think you’re wrong about the ultra-rich being “essentially normal people”.
by all evidence they seem to have developed a serious mental disorder, a kind of trained sociopathy.
I’ve never seen it put in such clear nonchalant terms as in this interview .
give it a watch, it’s extremely interesting and really puts into perspective how…just utterly inhuman the minds of the ultra-rich really are…
But yeah that’s the thing, even you call it “trained” sociopathy. I.e. everyone else could be trained into it as well. Of course that wouldn’t happen because people are different, we can’t predict everything yada yada. If you grow up with awareness about richness and the good of socialism, communism and so on it’s more unlikely you make the same mistakes and so on.
But if you’re extremely poor and have a mindset of “oh I just have to work hard and then be rich eventually” and actually aspire to be rich, which a lot a lot of people do, then I think those will quickly become exactly the same as current rich people. The reason the system still works is because there are still a majority of people believing in it and supporting it. Those poorer people would, if they became rich, be essentially the same kind of rich person as current rich people.
Oh I’m not saying they’re like, a different species of human or anything. This is just what being rich does to people.
They never experience that period where they have to settle for less. They always get more, and so they always want more. It’s the way their brains have been trained to expect rewards. Someone like me, who is happy using older stuff and waiting for the prices to come down, has been trained to live this way. Someone like them, who always wants the best and most expensive, was also trained to live that way. They become hungry ghosts because of their lifestyles.
Then we agree. It just sounded like you somehow attributed more inherent evilness to them than everyone else. I of course agree that the resulting behavior is worse, but mostly by accident through the situations they’ve been in.
There is no End Game.
They’re insulated from the short term consequences of their actions and believe that infinite growth can exist inside of a finite system. They treat their bank accounts like a high score board instead of resources to use. Their personal actions can be classified as “banality of evil” because it’s so routine and common place in their circles.
People might point to Musk’s old obsession with Mars, but that has been shown to be nothing more then a dopamine feedback loop. He said things that got him praise, so he kept saying them. When people kept asking about missed dates, he got angry and found a different audience for his dopamine feedback loop.
Don’t forget, those of us who “produce” aren’t even a consideration.
The working class will starve. We’re already working on it with inflation, but managing to keep enough calories coming in.
Soon, the billionaires will have no labor to produce food, and no labor to stock food, and no labor to handle their banal shit.
Then, they will hunt us for sport. Or, more likely, a few class traitors will hunt and butcher us while they go hungry and the billionaires eat of our flesh.
So, eat the rich before they eat us. Got it.
Let me introduce you to the wonderful concepts of feudalism and slavery.
You think that people have nothing to lose but their chains. They think people will have nothing to sell but their bodies.
There are steps in between. I think the next one will be company towns. Massive company buys a giant plot of land in the middle of nowhere. Builds a whole business complex there. Offices, manufacturing plant, shipping/ receiving infrastructure, etc. Then they build track housing around it, build a company-run grocery store, a private school completely funded by the business, etc. Invite in a bunch of familiar national chain restaurants, but make sure they’re all franchised, so they’re owned and operated by the company.
Then they recruit. They offer half decent wages. Nothing great, but they sell it to people by offering to pay for moving costs and massive discounts on company-owned houses.
These houses are brand new and waycheaper than a condo in the city! [pre-fab, low-cost bullshit that looks good but disintegrates in a couple years]
Come meet the neighbors! They also work for us, so you’ve got a lot in common! Built-in new friend group! [your boss also loves a block away and pays attention to your social life]
Your kids can go to school for free! [where we teach them to be good wage slaves for the next generation]
Soon, there will be an entire town 100% owned and run by the company. Wages will stagnate, prices will skyrocket. Workers will get in debt, all owed to the company. People will start to realize, but what the fuck are they gonna do? Company owns their mortgage, which is now under water. They’ve lost contact with all their old friends, because they live three hours outside the city and have had to work every Saturday for months.
Viola. Entire areas of wage slaves.
I can’t wait to be called on a Amazon’s Levy to give my life conquering some Microsoft’s chip factory.
The line will infinitely approach 0 but never get there. That is what credit is for. The rich will gladly let you borrow their vast wealth to buy the cars and the homes, and in exchange you will be their indentured servant for life. Win Win, economy go brrrrrrr…
What
In short:
If the rich loan you money with interest (banks being the intermediary) they can make money by taking a percentage of the value you produce while also keeping consumer goods flowing. Its already been happening for decades and is how the super rich are able to exist for decades to come.
