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 conspiracy brain in me, looks at ranting from people like elon musk, who say there’s going to be a population collapse, and Im thinking of Resident evil, (the bad movies).
I think they’re banking on the hope that in 20 years there’s going to be billions fewer people in the world, we’re already close to setting it off with the unprecedented increase of state vs state wars since 2020. Azerbaijan/Armenia, Israel/Levant, and even bigger ones that we’ve not seen since the 80s like Russia/Ukraine and with all probability, China/Taiwan by 2028 at the latest.
they’re banking on there being less people to feed, house, and otherwise provide for. so they can fall back to a kind of corpo-feudalism
I don’t think there’s any coherent end game for global oligarchs, just the habit of acquisition and growth without limit. It’s a kind of mental illness, in my opinion. As they say, the world has enough for everyone but not enough for the rich.
In terms of population and the ruling class it’s interesting to consider feudal Europe. Lords had complete control over those who worked their land. Serfs even needed permission from their lord to leave their village for any reason, they had no freedom to look for a better life elsewhere. (Incidentally this is why there are so many accents in the places like the UK—isolation lead to language differentiation.)
The Black Death destroyed the feudal system due to population collapse (on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend) and the nobility suddenly had to compete for workers, offering better pay and conditions to lure them to work their land. This lead to increased social mobility and the rise of the middle class.
We may be heading towards a new feudalism but it’s difficult to predict what it might be like, especially if there’s a population crash. Capitalism needs consumers no matter how much automation is employed to produce goods.