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?
The endgame is feudalism.
It’s not about money, it’s about controlling everything through the scam that is private ownership.
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.
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.
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…
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
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.
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.
Translated for the corpo class: if number go up too big, number no more go up.
Why use many word when few word do trick?
Its about control. When the stocks crashed in its a wonderful life, the evil banker was ‘kind’ to lend people money to switch over to being his customer. This brings them under their control.
It is a mental desease. If I hoard umfathomble amount of newspapers, I would be called a messi. If it is capital wealth, someone is a genius. They collect to fullfill an emptness in themself. It is a delusion. It is never enough and only the continiues ammassing can give them the feeling of success and control. Consumption as a Stimulus. It is not about the amount, it is about the growth. The way you took to the next number/amount. Distancing yourself further from the others. While getting confirmed by enjoying, what many can not affort. Wealth is the main storyline that is understood by every generation and culture around the world and is a globally accepted metric for desire and standing.
There is no Endgame. But a good perspective for them would be something like Elysium, while for us it is more like Gattaca - at best.
It is a mental disease
Yes. As a completely uneducated non-certified internet therapist I’d say that disease is fear. I really believe that those people that strive for more and more do so to try to fix a fear of not having enough. Or a fear of not being enough. Instead of actually trying to recognize the this fear and controlling it, they just do the one thing that can temporarily make them less fearful and that is make more, control more.
You’re assuming a level of competence for rich people that is unfounded.
Ditch the planet, let us have the wastelands, if they can’t just execute us first, or starve us to a more controllable population level. They want it to be them, and a small number of us to do the jobs they couldn’t or refuse to automate. This is the only answer that makes sense with everything they do. They aren’t stupid, they aren’t trying to destroy their own habitat, so their end game either doesn’t include us, or doesn’t include the planet entirely.
Feudalism
The same as any other accumulation process. Those unable to sustain themselves fall off the bottom and those with any remaining wealth are restratified into a hierarchy of the most to least wealthy.
The cycle begins again!
In mobile gaming we have an issue with whaling. A game will come out monetized beyond reason, and it doesn’t matter if 99% of players quit in the first hour, 1% of players have more money than brains and what they pay will make the game profitable. This is so effective that the play store now has no games worth playing because this is a far more lucrative business.
I see a lot of people taking about capitalism inevitably collapsing, but if all the money is collected in the hands of the 1%, products for the unreasonably wealthy will be the lucrative market. It doesn’t matter if only two people buy cars a year if the cars are sold at such a markup that it covers the annual expenses. Some my think that’s unrealistic, but we already have people who will spend a hundreds on a brick with a brand name on it. The ultra rich pay hundreds for a beige shirt that’s slightly higher quality than Walmart.
We’d be better off going back to barter than trying to peacefully pry the system from their clutches.
I dunno playstore has Balatro, Slay the Spire and many more indie games that don’t have microtransactions and are great.
But they’re the minority, most games have gatcha/pay-to-win mechanics. It’s actually hard to find some simple games where you aren’t harassed to buy things.
There are some good indie games, and many more can be ported to phones, but the list is still small.
I’m not an economist but I don’t think an entire economy can support itself on whales. We built an entire society off the idea that you need poor people to do jobs no one else will do. If those people starve to death, it’s not like rich people will just do their jobs because they need to be done. Your theory here only makes sense to me if I look at a couple individuals at a time.
I never said they’d do away with us, we simply won’t be part of the “economy”. The fineries of life will become increasingly limited to the haves and we have-nots won’t be considered in the metrics in the same way that some people do tolerate the ads in a game otherwise meant to catch whales. We’ll still work for our wages and spend it on our necessities but the island of what is meant for us will shrink and eventually lottery players will dream of ordering pizza instead of owning a
yachtbuying a nice carpaying off their debts.I kind of get what you mean, and again, not an economist, but I think the only way this capitalism thing ever “worked” was if money constantly flowed. If parts of that flow stop, it’s eventually gonna cause problems even for the rich that even “whales” can’t solve. We’re talking about whether or not money holds any value. Even a lot of billionaires could end up without much in terms of resources if that were to happen. Having a fancy car and house suddenly means a lot less once money is meaningless. I think it’s hard to even fathom all the effects of that, even for people who study economics. We are a few generations deep in this particular kind of society. Hurts my head to think about because it’s so foreign for me to imagine a world without money.
We’d be better off going back to barter than trying to peacefully pry the system from their clutches.
Normal people would just start selling the beige shirts…
