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?
Yeah I’m not sure I can picture that world in light of recent events. Your scenario seems to treat human beings like they have foresight. Unfortunately, we have seen pretty unequivocally that this trait is rare. In fact the existence of this post stems from billions of people noticing the obvious fact: practically no one, not even the rich, seems able to care about what happens in the not-immediate future.
In a mildly sane world, I’d say you’re right about that being a possible path for history to take. But I’ve lost my ability to find the sanity in this world. Sorry, I know this sounds dramatic but it is what it is. I’d love to still be the commenter who’d reply to a comment like mine here to try and instill a bit of hope but…I’m not.
Hmm, if you’re interested in expanding further I’d love you to share more detail. What specifically in the scenario I proposed would require foresight?
I suppose you could say the government passing some form of increased welfare could require foresight but even that is primarily reactionary (a reaction to the public unrest from record rates of unemployment and poverty). If you look at the civilian unemployment rate, it’s quite low right now, around 5%. In the worst of times, it’s been 10-15% during which there were huge pushes for the government to step in (ie. covid relief / 2008 financial reforms). That makes me think that if we experienced sustained high (15%+) unemployment it’s quite reasonable to predict that there’d be enough pressure for the government to provide some significant form of relief.
If anything, my pessimism would stem from social unrest due to the polarization of media, the hyper optimization of content, and similar negative byproducts of capitalism plus advanced optimization. But I view these all as distinct problems separate from the problems discussed here (the economic conditions induced by late-stage capitalism).
The kind of foresight I meant is just seeing that something bad can happen but maybe it can be stopped. We’ve been sprinting toward climate catastrophe for decades now. There’s almost zero chance most of those in power don’t know they’re doing that.
Is there any precedent for any country on earth instituting a long term basic income program? I honestly think the pieces of shit in power in America as of this month would rather watch the entire world burn down than do something like that. Trump might prefer having his penis cut off than doing it. So yeah, even if there’s precedent for something like that, you need someone in power that employs logic more consistently than what we’ve seen for a while.