It's a false assumption that the mass of people are required for the mass of consumption, at least in terms of sales price: The rich few can engage in luxury, o

It's a false assumption that the mass of people are required for the mass of consumption, at least in terms of sales price: The rich few can engage in luxury, or conspicuous consumption, if I'm reminded of a Veblen term. And the masses? Useless. A bit like how when an economy industrializes, mechanisms its agriculture, or opens up for food imports from already-industrial economies - huge numbers of subsistence farmers become destitute overnight if a transition is not carefuly planned and goes into effect gradually. Now, it's true that for many goods, their consumption is mass consumption: The rich can't eat 20x or 10x the calories to cover the production of foodstuffs. But those are generally the cheap products.