So when other countries stop having faith in an infinite number of Yankee Dollars (which they will) and stop taking them you'll see the whole thing come crashing down
If someone has something the US wants to buy ( like oil ) then they'll just be bombed till they do. Soon enough the powers that be will realize this ( they already have ) and just take the dollars and accept living like the kings they are *within the system*. If you have power, do you ally with the winning side, or do you attempt to find a coalition of those being shat upon? If you have power, you personally aren't being shat upon, because you rationally sell out. It's those with no power who are being shat upon - the poor. So who exactly is there to oppose power?
Macheavellii would say that it's always better to ally with the weaker side because it increases your leverage and prevents you from becoming someone's bitch, but do you really CARE if you are someone's bitch? I mean who wouldn't rather be a billionaire than a king? You get all the perks without the stress/risk/culpability
And the fact is, most humans are redundant. The world is going through a sea change as big as the one that caused an end to serfdom and brought forth the enlightenment and the rights of man. Instead of people being valuable b/c of megadeath caused by the black plague, and new untapped worlds opening up around the world begging for humans to take advantage the world is filling up. Stuff is more valuable than people. Now that humans are not valuable, they will be treated worse than before. I wouldn't be surprise to see a rolling back of the gains made since the middle ages. Only megadeath would seem to have a chance of making humans more valuable relative to things.
UC Davis' Gregory Clark has some iteresting insights about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZlXaGEzwg&list=PLmq9H75aU8iNWq2oXfH2y82yH1HzaITpa
Also, technology during the industrial revolution pushed human labor into pursuits that could not be mechanized. With thought itself more and more mechanizable, what is left for humans? http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-articles-about-robots-2012-12 ?
Paris Hilton is very productive. ( in the economic sense where work done with a backhoe is more productive than work done with a hand shovel ) Her labors are mixed with a very high level of capital. And what do those labors consist of? Merely not losing her money. Does she need to be superior in any way to perform her duties? is there any meritocracy going on? Well...
She can and likely does hire a finanacial planner. Brains are a dime a dozen.
She buys $40,000.00 purses. So at first glance it would seem she does a poor job at not losing her money. But she can afford $40,000.00 purses. That doesn't realy represent substantial consumption. Giving away half her money to someone who's never had money would involve *massive* consumption. If she gave me half her wealth, I would probably give half of it away to people I know who would also spread the wealth themselves etc. This would cause *millions* of dollars in consumption. A $40,000.00 purse is nothing.
So it seems Paris Hilton is far better qualified than I to be wealthy.
But isn't it weird that she doesn't have to do anything but not consume?
All she needs to do to not give away her wealth is insulate herself from need and the temptation to give it all away. That is, she need only stay amongst the her own kind and not mingle with the peasants.
Societies that support this tendency win out militarily because those societies with the most capital will be able to field the most fearsome militariy might including robotic military might. There is no reason to suppose that without valuable labor to parlay into means to consume, that most humans will have franchise in the future. As human endeavor becomes worth less humans will perish.
And robots should they come to mainly comprise the military, work against the naturally democratizing nature of military power which is that if the military comes from the peasantry then they will not kill the peasantry. It's no accident that the nobility WAS the military in the middle ages. It's the most efficient way to keep power in the hands of the fewest consumers. Technology would seem likely only to increase the levereage power can concentrate with. How few could actually run the world? Maybe someday zero.
But it's also likely that with concentrated power technological progress would slow.
The concentration of wealth and power leads to monopolies. And monopolies maximize profit, not production. This may actually be 'greener' than the alternative where production is maximized. The forests of Europe still have game. Would this be the case if they weren't owned by the nobility?
With the world divided amongst powerful monopolies who would have the incentive to disrupt things with new technology?