The problem is that in such a world where most economic growth is "virtual", you have to increasingly work with artificial, deliberate scarcity to keep all the

The problem is that in such a world where most economic growth is "virtual", you have to increasingly work with artificial, deliberate scarcity to keep all the virtual goods from losing their value. I.e., you now have to intentionally make the world a progressively shittier place for the majority of the population, just to keep the economy going. You can illustrate this effect with your example of the 1M$ handholding session. That's a shitty world right there in which no one who isn't a millionaire has any chance of human contact. But now suddenly there is a political imperative to maintain this state of affairs: Because should there suddenly appear a movement of people who want to decommodize human contact again ("free hugs" etc), this movement would trigger a risk of economic collapse.