No Stupid Questions

I read a short story years ago about just this. Quite an interesting read if anyone is interested.

The rich don’t care about money, they care about capital. They want to own every house, automobile, factory, and natural resources. Money is a very temporary store of value so more assets can be purchased.

There isn't an endgame.

Then the Reaganomics kick in

Slavery for us, power for them. That’s it. We get nothing, they get everything.

It's probably something like the story within the story For the Benefit of Mankind by Liu Cixin.

In the theoretical endgame employment is reduced to where there aren't enough people with money to be customers. There's a wave of consolidation as businesses with lots of cash buy failing ones, further concentrating wealth. Eventually the impoverished public gets desperate enough to riot and steal what they need, outnumbering law enforcement. The system no longer has the resources to protect itself, and we physically demolish our society. Then there's a reset back to a time of bartering.

They'll just keep screwing each other over until either one person owns everything, or we're smushed into the mud of conflict.

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.

It's like a Dark Souls game. Many of the bosses are tough, but the final boss is just some guy and is rather easy to cheese with parries. The mobs you have to fight to reach the final boss are harder than the boss itself.

The world is not a zero sum game. that alone defeats your premis-

They never will. But they’ll likely always have most of it. The government will print money just enough to keep inflation low-ish but allow people to feel comfortable enough to spend it. Big corps will eventually accumulate them and hoard it.

guillotines

"Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy

Hasn’t that endgame been pretty much reached?

I don't think we will get to that level. It doesn't make sense financially. I mean sure, replace people with robots will happen but it's a long way from happening right now.

This is a good, nutshell explanation of late-stage capitalism.

As far as the answer to "what's the endgame", I do not know. I suspect that many or most of these rich folks are so moneyblind that they don't know either. Or, they simply don't believe that their collective actions will eventually cause the system to fail.

But most likely, I think, is that they believe someone else will bear the majority of any negative impact. Of course this makes less sense in the face of a systematic collapse, but again: it's probably very difficult to see when you have dollar signs in your eyes.

There are 3 key necessities for UBI/freedom dividends:

1. It redistributes power not wealth. Bad greed is oligarchy capturing your rulers. UBI weakens politicians discretion, because just paying everyone more cash instead of their corrupt ideas is "idiocracy proof". Power redistributed to workers where everyone who wants a job gets 5 recruiter calls per day offering a better job. We all get greater power to say no to anything. Quality of life becomes exceptional without crimes of desperation, and the divisive hate that is easily manufactured from crime.

2. Redistribution means massive economic growth and overall prosperity even as it all trickles up to make the rich richer. "Velocity of money" is the key economic concept, but as income trickles back up to workers and owners, it means that the rich have to invest more to take all of our money.

3. The alternative is genocide. Oligarchy having all of the money and power, and AI/robotics to do work, means robocop detroit for Americans, and war on rest of the world to take their land. It doesn't matter that far more wealth can be generated with more people to sell stuff to. The logic of pillaging America/world for oligarchs with ever decreasing tax rates on corporations and the rich means more relative wealth and power for the oligarchy and its political minions.

This 3rd point is similar to yours. Except its not just "This is America, if you don't make money you're a douchebag", and the rich just give up on life, it's "you need to be exterminated because you are useless to the rulership."

For a while it will be that they only have almost all of the money; a small portion will have to go to the workers so that someone exists to run things like power plants and farms and mcdonalds and shit. But eventually robots will replace all that, or slavery

The end game is 1 person with all of it.

Automation.

With AI and automation, I think the 1% will want less people (bugs) around them in a not so distant future. We might have they answer to this question soon enough. Spoilers : we lose.