Comment on What's the endgame when the rich have all the money?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
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.
Economic constraints aren’t preventing the world from being converted into an enormous desolate golf course.
Wogi@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
This is my point though; they aren’t going to need to do that.
Wogi@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
I would argue that increasingly it is not. The relative value of labor is and has been declining due to automation.
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.