Which of the following is the most likely catalyst for a new age on earth?

[warpus]

If they have enough wealth, they only need access to what they want to consume. Income producing assets would be a luxury and susceptible to diversion by others. with Self sustaining enclaves and private travel between them the super rich would need little else and what happened outside of their enclaves might not matter at all.

The rich wouldn't exist without a middle class that has money to spend on stuff. If none of us had jobs, the 1% wouldn't have anyone to make money from. They rely on us to buy their products and use their services.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The rich wouldn't exist without a middle class that has money to spend on stuff. If none of us had jobs, the 1% wouldn't have anyone to make money from. They rely on us to buy their products and use their services.

How is Bill Gates (or the other super rich) dependent upon the middle class? They don't need to make money. All they need is access to what they want and currency.

 

[Bootstoots]

Amazingly, the best (or at least cheapest) catalyst for a new age on earth has so far been simply iron on top of iron oxides.

This one weird trick prevented a Mathusian catastrophe from happening by the middle-to-late 20th century, increasing human carrying capacity enormously (with consequent environmental damage, of course).

I'd say fossilized hydrocarbons, too, but since they get used up in the reaction they don't count as a catalyst.

 

[warpus]

How is Bill Gates (or the other super rich) dependent upon the middle class?

If there was no middle class, nobody would have a personal computer, and there would be nobody for Bill Gates to market windows to.

They don't need to make money. All they need is access to what they want and currency.

Their currency would be useless if they were the only ones on the planet who had access to any. What are they going to buy with it, if the economy doesn't contain any businesses selling stuff, because there's no middle class to market consumer products to?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Warpus, you are missing my point. The question is what might constitute the beginning of a new era. I'msaying that super rich enclaves that can exist independent of the rest of society would trigger such a change. As I see it, the rest of the world would go on its merry way into further poverty and confusion. The enclaves would just not have any reason to interact with that world except to go slumming. Having made their money, the super rich would no longer need or care about the middle class. It would be irrelevant to them. There would still be some sort of economy for the rest of us, probably based on inferior versions of everything.

 

[warpus]

Their money would be useless though, is what I'm saying. Where could they go and "spend" it? They could trade it with each other, yeah, but how many of them would there be? If you take out 99.99% of the economy out of the economy, whatever currency those who stay in loses most of its value. The rich rely on us being here buying their junk and using their services. Without us, they aren't rich.

If you're saying that they would cut us out, and use robots to control all their possessions, all natural resources, etc. then yeah, that could be a problem.

 

[Kyriakos]

Their money would be useless though, is what I'm saying. Where could they go and "spend" it? They could trade it with each other, yeah, but how many of them would there be? If you take out 99.99% of the economy out of the economy, whatever currency those who stay in loses most of its value. The rich rely on us being here buying their junk and using their services. Without us, they aren't rich.

If you're saying that they would cut us out, and use robots to control all their possessions, all natural resources, etc. then yeah, that could be a problem.

Many super-rich don't really need you to buy anything, cause they don't use a lot of their money anywhere (neither production nor investment). The money stays there (or increases through interest) regardless of what others do, short of a massive devaluation/hyperinflation. And even if that would happen the super-rich would more easily avoid catastrophy than anyone else.

 

[warpus]

These super-rich people you are talking about have most of their finances tied up in stuff that relies on people like you and me and the fact that there are hundreds of millions of us. If every single person who isn't rich died tonight, the markets would crash, and the rich would be left with money with no value.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, yes, i am not talking about some scenario were everyone else is dead. But the super-rich will survive fine even if the rest are reduced to poverty or some float barely above poverty and keep fighting among themselves for small-change, cause many of the super-rich don't use their money anywhere in the active economy (or use a tiny fraction of it there).

 

[warpus]

I was initially responding to the post by BirdJaguar

If they have enough wealth, they only need access to what they want to consume. Income producing assets would be a luxury and susceptible to diversion by others. with Self sustaining enclaves and private travel between them the super rich would need little else and what happened outside of their enclaves might not matter at all.

What happens outside their enclaves does matter. You can't just have a very small group of "the super rich" and everybody else be super poor. You need varying levels of income groups, and a lot of people in the main ones that end up driving the economy.

I mean yeah, you can have a scenario in which there are only a couple people at the top and most people are in a ditch. I mean, look at communism, that survived for a whole bunch of decades. But look at what happened to that, the system as a whole had a tiny amount of wealth compared to the capitalist/west system.

Rich people have figured out that it's better to have a middle class, people with money, freedoms, a well oiled economy that contains a lot of wealth that they can tap into and exploit. It's a lot harder to be rich if there isn't a big market there to be a part of.

I agree that everyone except the rich dying wasn't in the original hypothetical scenario proposed by BirdJaguar, but I just wanted to illustrate that it does matter what happens outside the enclaves

 

[civvver]

I think it's going to be some sort of transport tech where we can take the excess food that rich nations throw away and instantly feed the world with it, transport fresh water everywhere nearly instantly. Then everyone has clean water, food, next will come housing and clothing and suddenly you start moving towards a universal standard of living and eventually people don't "work" they just invert stuff or do computer things or become part of a gigantic neural net for machine learning or something.