> All the people employed by the government and blue collar workers?
You forgot the born-wealthy.
I feel increasingly like a rube for having not made my little entrepreneurial side-gigs focused strictly on the ultra-wealthy. I used to sell tube amplifier kits, for example, so you and I could have a really high-end audio experience with a very modest outlay of cash (maybe $300). Instead I should have sold the same amps but completed for $10K. (There is no upper bounds for audio equipment though — I guess we all know.)
This is the real answer. Eventually, when 95% of us have no jobs because AI and robotics are doing everything, then the rich will just buy and sell from each other. The other 7 billion people are not economically relevant and will just barely participate in the economy. It'll be like the movie Elysium.
I briefly did a startup that was kind of a side-project of a guy whose main business was building yachts. Why was he OK with a market that just consisted of rich people? "Because rich people have the money!"
The rich were able to insulate themselves in space which is much harder to get to than some place on Earth. If the rich want to turtle up on some island because that's the only place they're safe, that's probably a better outcome for us all. They lose a lot of ability to influence because they simply can't be somewhere in person.
It also relies heavily on a security force (or military) being complicit, but they have to give those people a better life than average to make it worth it. Even those dumb MAGA idiots won't settle for moldy bread and leaky roofs. That requires more and more resources, capital, and land to sustain and grow it, which then takes more security to secure it. "Some rich dude controlling everything" has an exponential curve of security requirements and resources. This even comes down to how much land they need to be able to farm and feed their security guys.
All this assuming your personal detail and larger security force actually likes you enough, because if society has broken down to this point, they can just kill the boss and take over.
> This is the real answer. Eventually, when 95% of us have no jobs because AI and robotics are doing everything, then the rich will just buy and sell from each other
My prediction is that the poor will reinvent the guillotine
You forgot the born-wealthy.
I feel increasingly like a rube for having not made my little entrepreneurial side-gigs focused strictly on the ultra-wealthy. I used to sell tube amplifier kits, for example, so you and I could have a really high-end audio experience with a very modest outlay of cash (maybe $300). Instead I should have sold the same amps but completed for $10K. (There is no upper bounds for audio equipment though — I guess we all know.)