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I can't take this thread seriously since the OP has chosen to engage with the false dichotomy of the "1% vs the 99%."
Really it's just the guys who get invited to the meetings where the fate of the world is decided. Most of the 1% are poor slobs who work for a living and have no control over anything.
Not seeing that. Anybody who gets paid to work serves an economic purpose.
The upper class has depended on the labor and support of the masses since civilization began. With the industrialization revolution automation and mass production changed things a bunch. Instead of just being a source of labor, the masses were now *consumers* of production. The best way for the oligarchs to get richer and more powerful was to grow the size of the entire pie. And so we've enjoyed almost 200 years universal prosperity and rising living standards.
What will happen when most people functionally unemployable and really don't serve an economic purpose?
As I said little to no economic purpose, but that population will grow with automation and the arrival of capable robots.
Just look at the Gulf states. They basically function like this already. They need somewhere between 4 and 10 to 1 relationships between the workers and ruling class to function. Now if we account for food and manufactured imports maybe that actual number rises to 15 to 1, but that still leaves out 84% of the population that the rest of the world has even while they maintain lifestyles comparable to any first world nation in North America, Europe, or Asia.
So no the 1% don't need all or even most of the 99%. We have real world examples of that. The number they do need will shrink in coming decades.
Better support manned space exploration. Shipping the excess human population off world is the only humane solution to the excess human population that the age of robots will produce.
Slavery has been society's traditional method of making those who exist of the economic fringes of society valuable to society, and this goes back to ancient times.
More like slavery was the way to get maximum work while spending as little as possible on the workers. It also gave your "free" peasants someone to lord over.
More like slavery was the way to get maximum work while spending as little as possible on the workers. It also gave your "free" peasants someone to lord over.
Hardly. If you want maximum work gladiatorial games make no sense. The Roman Empire simply had so many conquered people's that hundreds of thousands of them were essentially worthless and this could be killed as free entertainment. As I said above support manned space exploration. History shows that humans usually do quite horrendous things to the superfluous population once it gets too large.
Just look at the Gulf states. They basically function like this already.
Those countries are fundamentally dependent on the rest of the world. They are *not* functional developed industrial states. Many poor countries operate on a similar model where a ruling class gets rich from resource extraction and simply moves their wealth overseas instead of developing a local economy. Again it is the existence of the developed world that allows them to operate this way.
The Roman Empire simply had so many conquered people's that hundreds of thousands of them were essentially worthless and this could be killed as free entertainment. As I said above support manned space exploration. History shows that humans usually do quite horrendous things to the superfluous population once it gets too large.
They served an entertainment purpose. Fights to the death were a substitute for men who were lousy slave material and the only viable alternative was execution.
Civilization serves a ruling class. Always has and always will. For the last 200 years we've experienced a strange anomaly of symbiosis where their desire for greater power and wealth required the masses getting rich. Human rights, freedom, and democracy also maximized their desires by maximizing aggregate wealth.
We are entering an age where all of this will fall apart. Most likely the growing ranks of unemployable will be supported in poverty and measures will be taken to ensure that the "herd" culls itself naturally over generations. Slow erosion is the safest, since they will still require a substantial human population for a long time. But if a major crisis occurs, all bets are off.
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If we be truly consistent in what "the one percent is"
In fairly typical small towns of 1000 households, almost certainly the richest household or two are in it. If the town accurately reflects the USA as a whole, it's the 10 richest households. I don't see the richest household in a county of 10,000 people schmoozing with A-list Hollywood celebs and their pics in New York Social Diary | Society News & Entertainment
Those countries are fundamentally dependent on the rest of the world. They are *not* functional developed industrial states. Many poor countries operate on a similar model where a ruling class gets rich from resource extraction and simply moves their wealth overseas instead of developing a local economy. Again it is the existence of the developed world that allows them to operate this way.
Oh things would get tight to be sure even with their sovereign wealth funds if oil stopped selling. However, you still have an example of entire nations whose entire economy is based almost entirely on people being imported to work, and as we can see from how they operate most of the population of the 99% is not needed to have a well functioning economy when people are intentionally trying to use the minimum number of laborers.
They served an entertainment purpose. Fights to the death were a substitute for men who were lousy slave material and the only viable alternative was execution.
Lousy slave material? The Romans could send any unruly slave to the mines where they worked in near darkness and never went outside for the few weeks a mine slave could be expected to live and extracted real value from their lives. It was a place where slaves were simply so abundant there was no reason not to kill them. Otherwise they'd' expectations stuck with letting criminals and Christians fight wild beasts.
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We are entering an age where all of this will fall apart. Most likely the growing ranks of unemployable will be supported in poverty and measures will be taken to ensure that the "herd" culls itself naturally over generations. Slow erosion is the safest, since they will still require a substantial human population for a long time. But if a major crisis occurs, all bets are off.
You're awful optimistic about the beneficence of men in a society where human dignity and the sanctity of human life is under constant assault. Much easier to simply genetically engineer a plague to wipe most of the population. Or engineer a robot uprising to kill the peasants. Because when poor people have nothing to do but sit and procreate their numbers will increase instead of decrease.
Drop a 1% and a 99% percent on a streetcorner anywhere in a america and who will be better off in a year. It's simply about human capital. In the hawaii experiment they ultimately need each other. Not to mention this is not a closed system people go from 99% to 1 % and the other way as well. So don't think you are stuck in one or the other.
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