[ryanackley]

I was being sarcastic about business class and expensive handbags. You act like we all should be entitled to these completely unnecessary things.

What you’re suggesting is a return to some kind of neo feudalism which means the elites would need to field their own robot army to challenge governments because in that type of society the power of the sword is the only real power. With robot armies that build themselves and mine uranium for their own small nuclear reactors, we’re back in sci-fi territory.

[hodgehog11]

> You act like we all should be entitled to these completely unnecessary things.

Living standards should not be worse for younger generations than older generations. But more importantly, younger generations spend money on ridiculous "luxuries" because the situation for things people do need is actually much worse. The luxuries are the last straw, not the first thing to go.

> the elites would need to field their own robot army to challenge governments

Nationally, not through military power, through economic power and law. Since Citizens United, the elite own the government in the US, very clearly. They don't need to challenge anything, they don't need their own armies. They just need to maintain the status quo.

> the power of the sword is the only real power

Doesn't this sound familiar lately? Isn't this the post-Trump era headline?

[ryanackley]

In your new sci fi economy, where technocrats have a closed economy that excludes everyone else, citizens united would be dead. You can’t prevent people and governments from trying to take everything you have by bribing them with AI algorithms that they can’t actually use for anything. Yes, look at trump as the perfect example. The elite are kissing his ass and basically bribing him. That works because there is this entire economy with something called money and millions of people building and staffing airports and resorts and golf courses and private jet factories and pumping oil out of the ground and refining it into jet fuel. What happens when all of that goes away in your fantasy economy? Oh wait right…robots.

The USA wielding military power for the benefit of the wealthy is not new or a sign of the end of the economy as we know it