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What are the rich going to do with the vast tracts of land that they apparently claim, and then let lie fallow? Remember, in this hypothetical, all the rich nee

What are the rich going to do with the vast tracts of land that they apparently claim, and then let lie fallow? Remember, in this hypothetical, all the rich need to do is provide for their own consumption. This scenario being described here is exactly the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged - the rich (and their robots) all retire to Galt's Gulch and the rest of the world goes to hell. It's surprising to see so many Ayn Rand fans in one comment thread.

zanny 11y ago
Except that isn't playing out. There is no motivation to move to Elysium or Galt's Gulch because it takes a lot of money and effort to transport the worlds elite to one place. And to be elite is to be superior to peers. A huge part of the ethos of power is that you need the powerless to prove your position. The rich and powerful already own tremendous vast swathes of the world under the control of governments recognizing private property rights. (adjusted for land value, because I'm mostly talking about owning inner cities, but they also own the industrial complexes and megafarms). Again, supply and demand sets in, and when you use real estate as an investment and asset and are constricting its supply in most parts of the world as a source of revenue and profit, you aren't going to give that away any more than you will give away the robots. The property market is as bad as the labor market in how concentrated power is becoming. And property is not competitive at all since its a fixed resource and the value of it is only relative to its location which cannot be reproduced or innovated upon. Easily, at least.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  So if we have a distributed Galt's Gulch (e.g. some expensive towers in NYC and SF), how does that change things? How does a rich person owning a brownstone on my block prevent me from selling my labor to other non-rich people? When you discuss rich people owning inner cities, those inner cities have value because people want to live in them and have resources to trade for the right to live there. In this hypothetical dystopia, no one will have any resources to trade for living space, so those inner cities will become valueless. (Or perhaps the rich will enjoy walking through uninhabited cities.) There is plenty more land available at low cost in other locations - Detroit, Kansas, etc. What prevents the non-rich folks from building their own industrial complexes and inner cities in those locations? The rich and their robots can entirely occupy the abandoned city of Manhattan, but what prevents non-rich people from buying up $5,000 houses in Detroit and building a new utopia there?

zanny 11y ago

Except that isn't playing out. There is no motivation to move to Elysium or Galt's Gulch because it takes a lot of money and effort to transport the worlds elite to one place. And to be elite is to be superior to peers. A huge part of the ethos of power is that you need the powerless to prove your position. The rich and powerful already own tremendous vast swathes of the world under the control of governments recognizing private property rights. (adjusted for land value, because I'm mostly talking about owning inner cities, but they also own the industrial complexes and megafarms). Again, supply and demand sets in, and when you use real estate as an investment and asset and are constricting its supply in most parts of the world as a source of revenue and profit, you aren't going to give that away any more than you will give away the robots. The property market is as bad as the labor market in how concentrated power is becoming. And property is not competitive at all since its a fixed resource and the value of it is only relative to its location which cannot be reproduced or innovated upon. Easily, at least.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
So if we have a distributed Galt's Gulch (e.g. some expensive towers in NYC and SF), how does that change things? How does a rich person owning a brownstone on my block prevent me from selling my labor to other non-rich people? When you discuss rich people owning inner cities, those inner cities have value because people want to live in them and have resources to trade for the right to live there. In this hypothetical dystopia, no one will have any resources to trade for living space, so those inner cities will become valueless. (Or perhaps the rich will enjoy walking through uninhabited cities.) There is plenty more land available at low cost in other locations - Detroit, Kansas, etc. What prevents the non-rich folks from building their own industrial complexes and inner cities in those locations? The rich and their robots can entirely occupy the abandoned city of Manhattan, but what prevents non-rich people from buying up $5,000 houses in Detroit and building a new utopia there?