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> How do the gears of capitalism keep turning without UBI in such a scenario?

The part you've got wrong here is thinking that Capitalism is equivalent to innovation and growth, which it is not. Capitalism simply serves capital, and with less and less of its constraints being physically bound to resources, there is very much a plausible world in which only a small handful of consolidated bank accounts exist so long as those bank accounts can reasonably control the monopoly of violence.

There is a point historically in which Capitalism absolutely served to provide widespread innovation and prosperity at scale, but this is not a feature of capitalism inherently but rather a consequence of it when run within the existing system of labor mechanics at the time. Capitalism can still very much exist within a Feudal structure of governance, its contributions to society will be much lesser, but it can still very much exist.

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A prosperous middle class is not a requirement for capitalism to work, and there are more capitalist systems where that's not the case than where there is.

The upper class live in walled neighborhoods with private guards. There's a small merchant class, and then the majority of the population are working class. Much of Central and South America live like this.

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There was no middle class to speak of while living under communism here in Eastern Europe. We were all queueing for food equally. Except the nomenklatura, of course.
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We've seen in the K-shaped economy of late a new kind of consumerism.

The top 10% of consumers accounted for half of all spending in the second quarter of 2025.

Capitalism will happily chug along while leaving a massive number of people desperately poor.

There's a reason the AI CEOs have all become obsessed with the concept of a "permanent underclass."

If a UBI is ever "given" it will be just enough to keep the underclass from rising up and killing the owner class and not one cent more.

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> There's a reason the AI CEOs have all become obsessed with the concept of a "permanent underclass.

it's not for nothin that they've been slipping Zachariah 13:8 into discussions that show up in places like 8chan or ssethtzeentech videos

"Declares the LORD: 'in all the land, two-thirds will be cut off and perish, but one-third will be left alive' "

The marketing and agit-prop types would call this "priming" or "conditioning"

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Then they are in for a very rude awakening, given that the same God says "You must not wrong the widow and the orphan; wronged, they will cry out to me for redress, and their cry will be heard. My anger will blaze out against you, and I will smite you with the sword, making widows of your own wives, orphans of your own children." (Exodus 22:22-24).
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It's funny, because extreme poverty rates as defined by the UN have been decimated in the last century, and continue to drop, because of growth qua capitalism.

You're reflecting the populist notion that wealth is zero-sum. If that were true we'd still be in caves fighting over sticks. The average quality of life has skyrocketed in the last century alongside growth, and there's no non-capitalist country now or in history that's been an enviable place for average people to live.

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