It started in 1971 and it’s still running its course. So, look around I guess. If we don’t do anything in another 20 years it won’t be possible to own a home for anybody. We will all be severely restricted on what we can eat and how we can travel. Everything you buy will be disposable garbage that makes you sick and needs replacement often.

This is a United States issue. Other countries have this under better wraps.

The majority population falls into progressively more desperate poverty. Work hours are extended for less and less personal gain and greater risk of injury, disease, and disability. Recreation, autonomy, and actualization become ever more out of reach.

we all rot as they continue eating steak

money represents power and whoever has power will have the money.

i think you’re looking at this from a very “everyday” perspective - you think of money as something that is passed around and goes from A to B. the system at large does not work that way. just like the earth is flat if you look at any small patch of it but is round when you look at it globally, the economy works very differently whether you look at it at an everyday scale or at a global scale.

on a global scale, things are determined by geopolitical considerations, not by whatever companies or buyers/sellers do. like, that china exports so-and-so many tons of steel and imports so-and-so many tons of pork meat has very little to do with companies working hard to produce these products. it’s mostly some globalist philosophy to determine what happens on a global scale. for example, tariffs might completely change the game, if only there is the political will for that. as do free-trade agreements.

again, the same is true for any big country. “money” on a country-level is a fiction. it was invented by banks for complex reasons (mostly to simplify trade) and can be modified as long as it’s meaningful to the state’s politics. like, the state can just print more money through the federal reserve bank. in fact, it does that all the time. that cannot be explained by simple “trade transactions” as you’re imagining them rn. there’s abstract and complex and completely non-trivial maths involved in this game. “what happens when the billionaires own everything” only makes sense as a question when you consider that the concept of “owning” stuff is fundamental - which it is not. “Ownership” is a legal construct because the state deems it useful. with a different philosophy, the very concept of “ownership” might lose traction and become meaningless. The question therefore is: What is the political will at a state level?

They let us borrow some so that we can buy their products and pay them back more. We have to trade our labor to make up the difference between our passive income and current expenses, but they’ll only give us just enough to sustain a population of laborers.

Some take a risk and borrow wayyyy more than they can really pay back with their own labor and use that money to buy assets that they hope will be successful in integrating with the loop of money. If it’s successful, their assets buy the labor of others to generate income so they pay back the loan and do it all over again.

Usually happens coincidentally to them being in charge. Pray you can offer value to them, is normal advice (given by the oligarchy).

This is why I think they are all into crypto, because they see it as the next big currency and want to be the person controlling it

this is what people mean when they talk about the contradictions of capitalism.

I recommend the episode of Recess where they use monstickers as currency. In this episode, TJ finds ways to amass all the monstickers and make everyone else destitute. It occurred to me while watching the episode that all the other kids have to do is stop requiring each other to pay for stuff with monstickers, since nobody has them anymore. And then it occurred to me, why can’t we do that in real life? Why can’t society just collectively realize this whole money thing doesn’t work if a few people are hoarding it all and just come up with a new system? Instead people are being deprived of basic needs because of this stupid imaginary system

It basically already did

“All the money” assumes there’s a finite amount of money. There isn’t. In a fiat currency, like the Dollar, Euro or Sterling, banks create money when they lend, and the money disappears again when the loan is repaid. This is what a banking license gives you; The ability to make loans without having the existing money to back them.

Government spends by telling it’s bank (The Federal Reserve, ECB or BoE) to lend money for the things it wants to buy. Taxes then repay that debt and the money doesn’t exist anymore.

In an economy where huge amounts of wealth is horded, there’s a problem of liquidity. All of that wealth is idle. It’s not circulating and there becomes a danger of economic collapse. Therefore more money has to enter the system, either through government spending or commercial banks making loans.

Horded money is also money that isn’t going back to banks to repay the lending. So the amount of money in existence goes up, driving the value of that money down. This is inflation. One dollar can no longer buy as much as it used to as it’s value has gone down.

So, billionaires cause:

• Large amounts of commercial debt to inject replacement money into the economy. That is, personal debt or corporate debt.
• Inflation caused by that cash injection

Sound familiar?

Now a government could choose to raise its spending so that it injects the required money into its economy, rather commercial banks doing it. The advantage of that is that they can balance that with raised taxes, so inflation doesn’t get out of control. They can also choose who to tax and protect areas of the economy.

Most governments don’t see it this way, arguing that they can only spend what they take in taxes (The “government spending is like a household budget” argument). This has been false ever since they all came off the gold standard. They can spend what they want and they can tax what they want. The difference will drive inflation, so has to be kept reasonable, but if they don’t spend enough the commercial banks take over and will absolutely drive inflation.

Then the plebs reach for the scythes and the machetes.

That’s why the billionaires steal as much money as they can, but stop short of making a critical mass of people desperately poor: they keep most people poor enough that they try to fight for what little they have left, and between themselves for the scraps, instead of uniting and rising up against the kleptocrats who engineer their poverty.

Depends on how you look at it. Technically, it’ll never happen. The megacorps still need employees to do some tasks. They’ll still have some pocket money.

OTOH, you could say that it’s already happened. The plebs are broke, the middle class is basically gone, and the tax structure can’t support everything that the government wants to do. Eventually, borrowing runs out, and we get a crisis that makes the current economic troubles look mild.

I don’t relish this path.

The “plebs” will develop a new currency of their own. And by this I basically mean anything from bottle caps to IOU notes etc. Monopoly money, whatever. Arguably they could use something actually valuable too but using an IOU-type thing kinda secures it against theft. Point is that it starts with small communities with some degree of trust of course. Alternatively, trade work for food and goods - but we’re primed to use money so I think we’re likely to just create a new currency since we already know it’s simpler to just trade 5 bottle caps for a carrot than it is to wash dishes for… oh i dunno, 3 carrots or whatever.

This kinda is what we should be getting to do anyway at this point. The 1% should be regarded as a force of nature. You can’t win against them anymore you can win against a volcano. Best you can do is work around them (instead of trying to beat them at their own game which they are constantly rigging in their favor anyway).

Money itself only has as much value as we give it.