> it destroys the consumer base that capital relies on to buy its goods and services. therefore, society requires broad wealth distribution to function

This is becoming less and less true, because now consumption is becoming dominated by asset owners, to the point that a good jobs report is bad news because it means the fed are less likely to drop rates and through that inflate asset prices.

idk, if we look at a lathe, where the factory bought the lathe, this makes some amount of sense (although a closet full of idle lathes isn't worth as much as a factory full of lathe operators making stuff on lathes).

a saas subscription is (per user) probably cheaper than a lathe, easier to stop investment into (no need to resell to recoup some of the loan, just quit paying). A closet full of unused saas subscriptions is worth even less than a closet full of idle lathes.

And yet, these subscriptions make the knowledge worker even more productive (in dollar amounts) than a lathe operator.

obviously a knowledge worker can just subscribe to claude and start building, but building in a vacuum isn't worth a lot more than the closet of saas subscriptions. It's a mutal dependency, and it's the combined efforts of the team that results in this tremendous value add. I wonder if there isn't something there that is above and beyond the capital input and the risks associated with deploying that capital.

But maybe that's an argument for workers of the world uniting and founding their own companies together