Rich people selling stuff to other rich people is just moving wealth around, it does not generate wealth.
I sell you stuff worth 5 billion, you give me 5 billion. Nothing happened. Maybe you even consume the product so there is less wealth.
Only labor can generate value. Work is what transforms a thing into another thing that has more value than before. Machines and AI do not create value.
You might wonder what would happen if they had an general AI, maybe actual autonomous robots? Would those create value? Well, at first whoever got the first AGI would get incredibly rich but if everyone had access to that tech, the prices for everything that can produced with it would plummet down until they are the cost of running the AI.
Rich people get richer by employing poor people. So they can extract the value they produce. If they don't employ anyone, they are not making any profit. (Well for actual free markets, you can of course make profit being a monopolist and stuff or just do crime.)
So yes, rich people are screwed. That is why they buy bunkers in New Zealand. That is why we see the rise of fascism, because they will have to tighten the screws to keep the ship running a little while longer.
Why keep any ships running other than their own? kill off 90% of the humans, starting with the poor, using robots, after robots can make new robots and fix themselves and do all the other jobs?
If we're looking at extremes, I don't think the ultra rich are in as bad a position as you want them to be.
a lot of ifs there, most of which aren't really in the cards: aka laborless robotic self reproduction? seriously?
if we have learned one thing in the last decades it is that complex systems need to be rebooted sometimes because <state>
silicone valley is grifting its own rich people with paper bomb shelters.
If there’s a constant in history about rich people is that they can’t even wipe their own asses without a slave/servant, so they still need the person responsible for pressing the reset button on the robot.
I sell you stuff worth 5 billion, you give me 5 billion. Nothing happened. Maybe you even consume the product so there is less wealth.
Only labor can generate value. Work is what transforms a thing into another thing that has more value than before. Machines and AI do not create value.
You might wonder what would happen if they had an general AI, maybe actual autonomous robots? Would those create value? Well, at first whoever got the first AGI would get incredibly rich but if everyone had access to that tech, the prices for everything that can produced with it would plummet down until they are the cost of running the AI.
Rich people get richer by employing poor people. So they can extract the value they produce. If they don't employ anyone, they are not making any profit. (Well for actual free markets, you can of course make profit being a monopolist and stuff or just do crime.)
So yes, rich people are screwed. That is why they buy bunkers in New Zealand. That is why we see the rise of fascism, because they will have to tighten the screws to keep the ship running a little while longer.