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.
Comment on What's the endgame when the rich have all the money?
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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 then 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.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
deafboy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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…
Benaaasaaas@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I dunno playstore has Balatro, Slay the Spire and many more indie games that don’t have microtransactions and are great.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
punseye@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There are some good indie games, and many more can be ported to phones, but the list is still small.