[chewz]

> The question then becomes what are we (or what are the elites, really) going to do with these people.

Will give them money, drugs and computer games and some other distractions. Because we need their votes to sustain illusion of the republic.

It did already happen in Roman Republic. When conquests delivered unlimited amounts of free labor force small artisans and farmers could not compete but they had been able to vote.

As the autocracy had been anathema to Romans the state provided panem et circa [1]. And the republic survived another few hundred years. We are calling it Roman Empire but formally it had been the republic with voting going on every year on Fields of Mars and SPQR[2] on its banners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

[2] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_Populusque_Romanus