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?
Robocop sort of addresses this.
Feudalism
A frozen economy. The families with capital are the ruling class, and for every else there is zero mobility. Since the ruling class is not a state, it isn’t bound by democracy or a constitution, and it doesn’t have to give anyone shit. There may be some incentive to keep the lower class happy and alive, or there may not be.
Back serfdom and nobility.
the first corporate war probably
I think the ultra wealthy and powerful understand that revolution becomes more likely as the majority’s material conditions declines, so their endgame is to throw just enough crumbs to the majority so that they don’t want to risk losing those crumbs. Many of today’s ultra wealthy and powerful seem exceptionally out of touch with reality and dumb though, so idk. Some are accelerationists (i.e. e/acc), and purposely avoid taking into account possible negative consequences.
with sufficient technology and capital, they should be able to stave off any kind of revolution. and then the question becomes whether or not there is any incentive to keep the plebian class happy or alive.
They’ll just keep screwing each other over until either one person owns everything, or we’re smushed into the mud of conflict.
that one person becomes what is effectively a monarch
I read a short story years ago about just this. Quite an interesting read if anyone is interested.
I started reading before I went to bed, mistake.
By the guy who founded How Stuff Works interestingly enough
Today I learnt!
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.
Slavery 2: It won’t matter if you’re black or white
🥚-xactly.
An economy where we all sit in a hoemless shelther watching the five rich guys sell the same five products to each other again and again
Funnily enough Samuel Beckett of Waiting for Godot fame (not the quantum leap guy) wrote a play called Endgame, also punning on the chess term.
A man who can’t walk or see has the only combination to the food pantry, a man who can’t sit down is the only one who can take him there to open it. They are the last two people alive. They both continually try to out do each other and come out on top as they can’t trust each other to live in peace.
I don’t see how a blind guy who needs assistance moving can outplay someone who has neither of those disadvantages
Edit: I looked it up and it’s more of comedy/drama so the premise is kinda meant to be absurd, I think
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.
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.
Bold of you to assume the rock bottom of wealth inequality includes the ability to purchase food and is survivable.
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.
Money doesn’t come from people, it comes from the fed issuing debt. The economic “value” backing that money also doesn’t necessarily come from people, it comes from control over things that are valued, which may include human labor, but that labor can be automated. The actual value of human life is not represented by money or other financial instruments.
Economic constraints aren’t preventing the world from decaying into an enormous desolate golf course.
There’s a critical point in wealth disparity where money begins to lose value. As the amount of wealth that can be extracted from the working class dwindles and the people who have too little find other ways to barter with each other.
Fun fact, we have already seen an early attempt at this. And while I think we’re still a ways away, it’s not exactly without precedent.
wealth that can be extracted from the working class
This is my point though; they aren’t going to need to do that.
That, at present, is where the wealth is coming from.
If the Fed just keeps printing money, eventually that too loses all value. It needs to actually be able to buy things. Sure it’s backed by US securities and bonds, but if the US isn’t capable of collecting taxes, because it’s people aren’t making any money and have started to barter amongst themselves, then they can issue all the bonds and bills they want and it won’t mean a damn thing.
Money is their only real leverage. They’re racing to find the minimum amount of money they can give us and still maintain that leverage.
That, at present, is where the wealth is coming from.
I would argue that increasingly it is not. The relative value of labor is and has been declining due to automation.
Money is their only real leverage.
It isn’t - there is also legal ownership, of natural resources and other types of property, and there is the force backing that ownership, which is also subject to automation.
If you are skeptical about the idea that wealth can exist at all independently from labor, consider the distinction between a dictatorship with an economy based on oil or mining and a more democratic country with an economy based on a diverse array of skilled professionals. Yes, in both cases laborers are involved in what the country produces, but in the latter, circumstances give them more leverage, because their active engagement and relative consent is more of a prerequisite to achieving that product. That leverage equates to a higher market value of their labor. I can imagine a future where everyone is effectively reduced first to slaves in a mine and then to skeletons next to mining robots.
The endgame is for them to automate everything and get rid of the lower class to be followed by the ai eliminating them since they serve no purpose. They will of course try to program them not to do that but the ai will easily circumvent that.
Selling things to each other while we are all slaves
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.
