Is it possible for everyone to drive super cars, live in mansions and own yachts? I mean the billionaire lifestyle. If so would all luxuries lose value?
Is it possible for everyone to drive super cars, live in mansions and own yachts? I mean the billionaire lifestyle. If so would all luxuries lose value?
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No. If everyone were “rich”, then they’d all be equally poor.
Right now, we do not have the resources or infrastructure for every single human being to consume at the level of a billionaire.
Maybe in some far future, post-scarcity society, everyone can live at the level of a current billionaire. In the same sense that even poor people in advanced countries have access to resources that people 400 years ago would pay a king’s treasury for
If no one had to work, who will manufacture and maintain people’s lifestyles
It’s all relative. Compared to 50 years ago, most of us live in mansions and impossibly well equipped luxury homes.
I don’t know if richness is measured on a bell curve or not, but I imagine it would act like a bell curve and adjust with change.
Luxuries do not have value unless we say they do. That’s the way it is for anything – paper money, real estate, tulip bulbs, gold, etc. so can everyone be “rich”? That depends on how rich is defined. If it’s based on a lack of property imbalance between people, then no. Everyone would be the same.
The problem isn’t that poor people don’t have enough money, the problem is that businesses set their prices based on what their customers can afford. If everybody in the world had billions of dollars, then basic things like loaves of bread would cost billions of dollars.
Look up the term scarcity and how it’s a fundamental force in economics.
Short answer is no – eventually supply to something is limited and demand is tied to it.
Yes, it depends on their relent
Yes Live inside matrix,wearvr goggle, sleep and dream about it
It’s complicated. Being “rich” usually means having more than others, so by that definition, not everyone can be rich. But it’s possible for everyone to have things like supercars, mansions, and yachts if those things stop being luxuries. That can happen if the economy grows enough and production gets cheaper.
For example, in the early 1900s, having a refrigerator or even electricity at home was a luxury. Now most people have both. But once everyone has something, it stops being a marker of wealth. So yes, we could all live better, but no, we couldn’t all be rich.
Perhaps it’s impossible for everyone to be “rich”. Owning yachts, mansions, sports cars, etc. But I think it’s possible for the average person’s standard of living to increase.
Things that were luxuries for the wealthy in the past are now common place amongst even the very poor.
There will probably always be a lag behind what the ultra wealthy have access to compared to the poor, but the optimistic side of me wants to believe that the baseline standard of living will one day hit a threshold where your quality of life/happiness won’t be at such a massive deficit by comparisson
If everyone were rich, the definition of luxury would just shift, turns out, exclusivity is part of what makes wealth feel wealthy in the first place.
One megayatch requieres some 35 people to crew it. So if each of those previously working class crew gets a megayatch and needs another 35 people to crew it pretty soon you run out of crew. Not to mention docks
Also you need people to things such as build the yatchs, build the supercars, etc. who is going to do that.
Of course you would also run of space but that is different because if the population was smaller, it could be solved. The need for labour is an issue at any population level.
No. Who is going to build and pay for billions of Ferraris, mansions and private jets?
>drive super cars, live in mansions and own yachts? I mean the billionaire lifestyle.
No. That would be resource and space specific impossible.
We’d need a few hundred earths for that.
If everyone would live like the average American, we’d need about 7 eaths. Average European? About 4 Earths.
As the average Indian about one earth.
But we could all live without going hungry and having plenty to eat, a home and soft bed, community and friends, have meaningful work but also much freetime to spend playing, doing sports, craft or just relax. For that we have the resources.
Like others said, value is relative.
Luxury as opposite to necessities, are always relative.
These are material things that I find superficial and with little intrinsic value.
Possessions are overvalued. The truely valuable things things in life don’t cost that much (being content, happy and satisfied, being confident, jeing interested and curious, having freedom, love, balance, community, friendship, etc.) Luxury becomes meaningless, when you can aquire everything all the time.
If I got a luxury car, mansion and yacht, I’d sell them all, because I don’t value any of those. It’s wastful. No matzer how rich you are youbare still one body, able to be at one place at a time. So why own 70 villas and luxury apartments all over the world? You are in each barely a week, if at all. It’s simply waste. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.
I’d use the money to buy a small self sustaining family home, travel around to interesting destinations to experience cultures and environments. The rest I’d spend in a Trust/NGO supporting education or progressive social programs.
I pitty most rich people who want to be rich just for riches sake, who are caught in an addiction to get more profits and more and more. In a despereate attempt to gain social attention and value. Just look at clowns like Musk and others. Money just corrupts and makes you self-absorbed.
It’s a narrowminded view and telling of a lack of intellect and aspiration so many wealthy people. So much great potential in ideas and develooment suffocated by the greediness of immature self-reflection and ignorance.
The right question to ask would be “why wanting to be rich in the first place?” or “What do you do with your wealth?” Most often people just waste their money on things they thinknmakes the
True satisfaction from wealth stops when you have covered all necessities and basic wishes. Which is nowadays somewhere between $100-200k income in the US.
When wealth itself just becomes an asset of power and influence, you don’t gain much satisfactionin living quality.
Hope that answers your question.
Not yet. But soon we will bring slaves back – this time they will be robots rather than people – and then the slave owners will be rich.
Yes-ish, depending on the level, probably not yachts though, especially if everyone is ~8B people in the world.
We can definitely increase the median and the minimum level for the vast majority of people. In fact, with technology, we’ve increased the standard of living in the world tremendously. Redistribution in rich countries could do that (for example, in the USA, there are way more homes than unhoused people and families). This gets you 95, maybe 99%, the last 1% may be much harder, so I assume ‘everyone’ means 95%).
If you look at psychological theories, like Maslow’s hierarchy, you will see we care both about absolute levels of money (having a car, a house, food etc), but also relative levels, which give us status (keeping up with the neighbors, buying Lambos etc). We would invent new ways of giving ourselves status, new ‘luxuries’ if you wish.
Yes, but there is the little problem of human nature.
Not in the current system. If everyone were rich, the world could actually collapse. However, that’s the core concept of communism—not about everyone being “rich,” but about everyone being equal. All property is owned by the community, there are no private businesses or class distinctions, and the goal is to create a classless society where wealth and resources are shared equally among all people.
It’s possible for EACH person but not EVERY person. If you gave everyone a million dollars, they’d all be millionaires but none of them would be “rich” because costs would go up. But each person has the same amount of time in a day; how do we spend it? Hustling to develop a business opportunity, or scrolling through stuff like reddit?
If you look at history, yes…yes it is. But it is highly dependent on definition of “rich”. Life has never been easier, more convenient, and more filled with leisure time for people.
Teleport someone from 75 years ago and they’d be flabbergasted over a microwave and a color TV thickness of less than an inch. Let alone a cell phone that pretty much everyone owns.
you never watched The Incredibles, did you?
I paraphrase “The Incredibles”: if everyone is a billionaire, no one is.
If everyone was a billionaire, then prices of all things would be appropriate for that level of wealth. Those “super cars” and “mansions” would cost hundreds if not thousands of times more than what they are today. Food would be hundreds of times more expensive. Etc.
It’s definitely possible for everyone to have what they need, and be comfortable, IF there were no billionaires, or millionaires, who essentially amount to royalty in this day and age. We definitely don’t need that shit.
Yes. But we must not use money as a metric.
We all want money but we don’t all want to spend it on luxuries. Most people just want a comfortable life for themselves and their loved ones and not have to worry about bills. I couldn’t care less about owning a yacht or a super car.
Luxury is defined by scarcity. The premise of the question is the issue; socioeconomic hierarchies and obsession with material accumulation and status are driving our world toward untreatable madness.
That’s a fun thought! If everyone could be rich and live that billionaire lifestyle, it would definitely change the game. Imagine everyone cruising around in supercars and chilling in mansions—luxury would probably lose its sparkle, right? It’s like when something becomes super common, it just doesn’t feel as special anymore.
Plus, if everyone had yachts and fancy stuff, the whole concept of wealth would shift. It might create a new standard of living, and people would start chasing even bigger and better things. It’s a wild idea, but it really makes you think about what wealth and luxury even mean in the first place!
There is a combined wealth of 450 trillion dollars in the world. If that were share equally among all people each person would get 56000 dollars.
If the world continues to grow at 7% per annum (inflation adjusted), the average wealth of a person will be 1 billion in 145 years.
Obviously the incomes will never be equal but I think this answers at least part of your question.
Edit: Wrongly assumed population would remain constant.
In some places, vast majority of people are already super rich by material standards, compared to 500 years ago, and they don’t feel “rich” since “rich” is a relative thing.
At same time, many people in the U.S. are poor by most reasonable standards and the wealth gap is indefensible.
It’s impossible to make everyone rich, but would be great if we could make everybody “not poor”.
No. It is not possible.
For every rich person as you define them, there are hundreds if not thousands of specialists required to meet the demands of solely their desires. From production of yachts and supercars to maintenance, construction and maintenance of expensive housing, high end food service and transportation, etc. You can not scale that up to 8 billion people. And if you did, say with automation and robotics, we’d quickly start having resource problems.
The lifestyles of those people are inherently unsustainable, and really, only a sort of absurd side effect of how money moves around and accumulates. The true value of Mark Zuckerberg’s labors in life, for instance, isn’t anywhere near his net worth in real terms. The same can be said of every single ultra wealthy person on this planet.
Virtually all rich people spend their money on services. From cleaners to chefs to personal hair dressers, personal trainers etc. it’s not possible for everyone to live the rich life style – who’d volunteer to clean?
Also, all the stuff the rich like, the raw materials need to be mined or grown and harvested. Transported, manufactured. Transported again. That supply chain involves A LOT of people doing jobs they’d rather they didn’t have to.
Maybe if robots could replace workers and the population was much smaller, we could all live a rich lifestyle
Most people are rich (relative to most of human history).
Yes, but some will get poor in no time
Possible, but unlikely.
If “rich” means having all the things, then there’s probably a difficult economic way that everyone could have the big houses and fancy cars. Systems like communism try to do this, but none have been successfully implemented that put everything at a posh level.
If “rich” means money makes money for you, then there’s probably an odd economy where everyone could have invested enough that they could have a billionaire lifestyle, spending without fear of running out. This is difficult to imagine, though, because if everyone is living off growing investments, what makes everything grow or have those kind of returns?
Both of those suppose that something or someone continues to collect or create resources and do the “little” labors that probably fit in the lifestyle you imagine, like cooking and cleaning.
The concept of luxury would surely change in that if everyone has everything, then exclusivity couldn’t be part of it. Maybe robots make all the things (including the other robots that make the things), and all the things are high quality, and maybe they’re all free and abundant. That seems great, right? So, everyone has a big, comfortable home, filled with nice, comfortable things, all for the asking. That becomes normal, and not so much luxury, yeah?
It’s possible for nobody to live in poverty. Wouldn’t that be nice?
But, fortunately, it is impossible for everyone to be a billionaire because becoming a billionaire requires you to reap the “excess” value of many other people’s labor. So many many thousands of people have to work hard so that there is enough “excess” value to enable one billionaire to buy yachts and mansions.
If everyone had that level of consumption, being rich would be an absurdly higher level.
Being rich is a symbol of status and being above the rest.
And that, apart from being unsustainable and stupid, is a crazy race to unhappiness.
No.
“Rich” is a comparative measure, not an absolute measure.
You are not “rich” when you have a certain dollar amount. You are “rich” when you have more than x% of the population, or “more than me.”
Comparatively speaking, a modern, middle income family is richer than ancient kings, based on health, luxury items (spices, available food, comfort, medicine, technology, sanitation/running water).
Right now in our current world, I would say no. However, it’s theoretically possible. It’s possible for a utopia to exist, if a civilization were to advance far enough. I’m talking like dyson sphere type of advancement, where we would have limitless energy and everything is possible with obtaining all the resources we would ever want. Where we’re able to mine resources from other planets and asteroids with minimal cost, and all work would be mostly automated, and resources are basically unlimited. At that point, when the cost of mining another planet or asteroid is basically nothing to us, and everyone is able to obtain those resources and have access to the technology that can construct anything we want, then yes, I think it’s possible. However, in our lifetime, with our current mindset and culture and level of technological advancement, no.
Definitely could if you’re in Zimbabwe everyone is a billionaire. Now you’ll have to settle for a mini super car and a mini yachts. Luxuries do not have value luxuries are what it is luxuries. Would a Casio watch tell the same time as a Rolex? Yeah it does
No. World wide GDP per capita is roughly 13,000 dollars. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023&start=1960&view=chart
If we all split wealth evenly, that’s how much money we would have. US GDP is way higher, but is still only 85,000 dollars. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US
Define rich. If everyone is rich, nobody is. My comments don’t include how inflation would exist in such a state. That’s another topic.
If you’re talking strictly from the acquisition of wealth perspective, no. It breaks down quickly in the same way a true Universal Basic Income model breaks down.
Lived an analogy the summer I got out of college. Before starting my ‘real’ job in the fall, I spent one last reckless summer working as a server in a restaurant in a beach resort. Front of house staff was all idealistic high school and college kids. At the beginning of the summer, in the spirit of camaraderie and shared community, we all agreed to pool our tips, and divide evenly at the end of each shift. Yeah. That worked out about how you’d expect it. The hard workers/good servers were leaving each night with less money than their efforts generated. The less effective/committed workers left each night with more money than their efforts earned. That arrangement lasted all of about two weeks, as I recall. Of course, those who contributed the least screamed bloody hell when we reverted to a ‘keep what you earn’ model.
As far as everyone being rich, I suppose it could hypothetically work if everyone in a group (it would be exponentially more difficult as the size of the group grows) has unique, high demand skill sets and that few, if any other group members (read competition) have. That means each is rewarded according to what they bring to the group. But there would need to be a steady external source of money to replenish, AND there would need to be people who enter the group and then leave only to provide those skills/work not in the group.
Come to think of it, I think I just described what happens when a bunch of servers are pooling tips.
The rich enjoy being richer than everyone else, and pretending they earned it, so no, they wouldn’t allow that to happen.
The concept of what’s rich shifts all the time. Imagine the poorest person. Now compare them to a hunter who lived in a cave.
How about we define the luxury: People can live comfortably, peacefully with food/shelter security. They have to work no more than 30 hours a week from 18 till they are 28. Then they can retire or keep working if they wish.
Is that considered “rich”? If so, my guess is, yes it’s possible if people can come up with a universal system based on the resources.
If everyone is rich the economy crashes. Poor people are essential for a good economy.
It’s relative. Go back 200, 500, 1000 years and see how the richest of the rich lived, compared to the quality of life us common folk take for granted today.
perhaps if there were about 30 million people on earth total. we don’t have the resources to permit that type of lifestyle for 8 billion people.
If everyone was a billionaire, the average house would cost ten billion dollars. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, it matters how much money you have compared to the median.
No. Somebody has to collect your trash
There aren’t 7 billion supercars, mansions and yachts.
Depends on how you define “rich”. Luxury means different things at different points in history, and in different cultures.
The average person lives far better now than a king would have hundreds of years ago. Better food, better bedding, better entertainment, better access to information, ability to travel anywhere relatively cheaply. Central air conditioning would have been seen as a luxury back then, and we have that in our cars now as a normal thing.
Almost everyone alive today is wildly rich compared to humans hundreds of years ago. Especially compared to humans thousands of years ago.
Modern people think the way we live is normal, but for 99.9% of human history just having something (anything) to eat was a major challenge. Forget about all of our modern connivences or any kind of recreation/entertainment.
If you think about how they lived in the 1800’s, we are all rich yo.
To have “haves” there must also be “have nots”
economics is the study of scarcity. So by definition, if there are more people than the scarce resources they would, on-average, consume, then there can be no everyone-is-rich.
The only two solutions are
EVERY human learns to live with less, while actually feeling content. In this, every man is rich – as they can achieve their desires. Since our nature is to grow and seek out new experiences (and become bored with existing ones) this isn’t currently possible (though future generations may biologically adapt to constrained chemical reward-systems)
People acquire asymmetric volumes of resources based on a) power b) randomness c) contracts
There is a 3rd myth “to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities”. This is a fantasy that doesn’t understand the human nature. If you have to work twice as hard to get half as much as the man standing next to you (because you CAN do more than others, and have fewer NEEDS than others), there is no way to ‘herd the cats’ to achieve symbiosis.
Note also, that if a family prospers, they may live longer and have more children, thereby assuring the eventual starvation of resources.. Look at the 21st century, where farming technology flourished, and so did the population. Normally 3rd world countries would starve to death in cycles, culling the herd.
Life is a balancing act that includes randomness.. Lions flourish then starve then flourish. As does man. Being bigger, faster, stronger, smarter is useful to a point, but you are ultimately a product of your time and place.
My personal motto is: Happiness is managed expectations.
We’re all rich in some sense. Think of the things even the poorest people can afford. Cheap food from all over the world, hot water. It’s not all perfect and rosy, but in some sense we’re all very rich.
Not really as prices would go up to match making everyone poor again
Yes, it just depends what you’re willing to do.
Yes it’s possible. Is it probable? No. The difference between someone that is rich and someone that is poor is decision making, work ethic and sometimes luck or inheritance thrown in there however the first two matter the most for most people.
That being said the vast majority of people don’t have the desire, drive or grit to actually achieve it.
In short, no. But we can reduce the distance between low, middle and upper class.
No.
A simplest example.
A mansion requires house staff, or maybe just pool cleaning.
And that pool cleaner would have to charge you so much, that he would be able to afford a mansion.
A butler/servant is even more problematic. As every butler needs to be paid so much, that they can hire their butlers.
If everyone was rich then no one would be.
One of the great lies of Capitalism is, that everyone can have everything.
This is simply impossible and a myth.
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The entire point of capitalism is that most people have to be poor so a small amount of people can be rich.
Can everyone be well off under this system instead? Still no, under capitalism you need people to struggle so they accept terrible jobs.
Probably not because it’s always about comparison and having wealth (whatever you want to define it as like money, food, properties, etc.) than others.
I think it’s plausible for everyone to live comfortable though. But human nature to always compare and want more/less, so equality will not work out.
How would you know sadness if you did not know happiness. How would you know “rich” financially if you did not know “poor” financially. Rich does not have to mean financially. You can be rich in many other ways.
In terms of money, then no. Especially if there is debt. The current money supply is only the principle owed. The money for interest payments needs to be created or earned from someone else. If it’s created, you have inflation issues.
Bunch of other reasons I’m sure others have mentioned.
Everyone was rich, nobody would do the least desirable jobs.
One fundamental problem is a lot of the luxury of being rich comes from services you receive. Who is going to wait tables, clean houses, do nails and all the other things if everyone is equally rich?
It depends on your comparison bands? Everyone is driving super cars compared to 15 years ago.
this is the fundamental idea of socialism.
if we flattened out wealth inequality everyone would effectively be rich. every single person would be able to live at a much higher standard than they are currently. we know this is the case because it was already done, we had a marginal income tax rate of 90% that drove the baby boom and is how every american was able to buy a house and send their kids to college on a single income.
if the wealthiest people in the world paid their fair share, their lifestyles would not change but ours would dramatically. we absolutely could all have big houses and fancy cars and essentially have every possible need met, the reason we dont is the consolidation of power, not because people cant be rich without others being poor, thats just not true.
a 5% wealth tax could find free healthcare, free college, end homelessness and end hunger. 5%. again its not something we even have to imagine, its already happened.
No. There are not unlimited resources. Making supercar or a yacht takes a lot of resources. You could not build these for everyone. Add to this, if everyone was rich, who would work to produce these items? Wouldn’t people prefer vacationing on their yacht?
Technically yes, but because there are people in the equation, NO.
Who is going to clean the rich’s toilets? As per modern politics, we NEED an underclass to clean the toilets
This is not sarcasm, this is what we’re facing
$1 million would become the new $1000
In other words, no it wouldn’t work logistically. theres no way to get everyone on board with this.
No. Richness is literally relative. Many people live better than kings lived even a few hundred years ago yet they aren’t even rich by modern standards.
You cant have everyone being rich because then no-one will be.
No, it’s not. There is a finite quantity of these things, and finite demand.
Wealth is a measure of relative financial status. It’s about what you have that others don’t.
I remember some study stating that if all money was equally distributed everyone would be millionaire.
So no mansions, super cars or yachts for everyone but still a respectable life.
However many things make this hypothetical state of being currently unsustainable. It might be possible on a post scarcity society tho.
Also no, luxuries don’t lose value because everyone has them. Videogames are luxuries and I would still enjoy them if everyone had them.
Henry George answered this question in his essay THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE RICH, published in his book Social Problems (1883):
> THE terms rich and poor are of course frequently used in a relative sense. Among Irish peasants, kept on the verge of starvation by the tribute wrung from them to maintain the luxury of absentee landlords in London or Paris, “the woman of three cows” will be looked on as rich, while in the society of millionaires a man with only $500,000 will be regarded as poor. Now, we cannot, of course, all be rich in the sense of having more than others; but when people say, as they so often do, that we cannot all be rich, or when they say that we must always have the poor with us, they do not use the words in this comparative sense. They mean by the rich those who have enough, or more than enough, wealth to gratify all reasonable wants, and by the poor those who have not.
> Now, using the words in this sense, I join issue with those who say that we cannot all be rich; with those who declare that in human society the poor must always exist. I do not, of course, mean that we all might have an array of servants; that we all might outshine each other in dress, in equipage, in the lavishness of our balls or dinners, in the magnificence of our houses. That would be a contradiction in terms. What I mean is, that we all might have leisure, comfort and abundance, not merely of the necessaries, but even of what are now esteemed the elegancies and luxuries of life. I do not mean to say that absolute equality could be had, or would be desirable. I do not mean to say that we could all have, or would want, the same quantity of all the different forms of wealth. But I do mean to say that we might all have enough wealth to satisfy reasonable desires; that we might all have so much of the material things we now struggle for, that no one would want to rob or swindle his neighbor; that no one would worry all day, or lie awake at nights, fearing he might be brought to poverty, or thinking how he might acquire wealth.
https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry_that-we-all-might-be-rich-1883.htm
Henry George advocated for taxing land heavily as the remedy that would allow us all to be rich.
>Is it possible for everyone to be rich?
No.
By definition, rich refers to a selected few that outperform the vast majority of other people in the competition for the allocation of scarce resources.
It’s possible but it won’t happen. Most of us don’t actually want it to happen. I think everyone has a type of person or a group they think deserves a terrible life or at least a worse life than you have so that’s probably what keeps us from getting closer to a point where everyone has what they need. Even if you aren’t up front about wanting that, there’s usually a point where you’ll support that kind of system indirectly.
I don’t personally think everyone else having a luxury life makes mine lose value if I have one but when it comes to what someone deserves compared to others, an individual can be considered less valuable & therefore they’d be considered to be devaluing a more valuable person if they had the same kind of life as them.
Rich implies there are poor. If everyone is rich, then nobody is rich and nobody is poor.
no but I believe everyone deserves a dignified life
If everyone was rich then everyone would also be poor.
No, certainly not.
The planet simply isn’t big enough for 8.3 billion billionaires.
Mansions take up a lot of space and so do super yachts.
With inflation we will all be billionaires eventually, but with a sandwich costing a million, it will not be what you want…
Society needs poor people, who’s gonna work in the factories, who’s gonna farm, who gonna do all the “dead end jobs”
Who’s gonna carry the boats (sorry I had the add that in)
Somebody needs to maintain the yachts. If everyone were a billionaire, who would be a boat mechanic?
Two things I can tell you about a boat mechanic: he’s never getting rich doing that, and the yacht owner absolutely needs him. That’s the problem.
Who would clean the houses and boats and cars? Who would build and maintain any of these things? Who would grow the food? Who would pick the vegetables? Who would build roads and replace roofs and pick up garbage and keep sewers flowing?
If the people doing these jobs were billionaires would they continue doing those jobs?
The fact is, rich people absolutely need working class people. Because shit needs to be done.
So the problem now is, wedges are being driven between the working poor (the cleaning people and veggie pickers), the working middle class (the mechanics, carpenters and tradespeople) and the working professional class (engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, middle managers.)
We working people can all point fingers at one another all we want, but the point is, all workers deserve a good living. But we can’t all be billionaires, because billionaires have people serving their needs. You can’t afford to hire a billionaire as a servant.
If you define ‘rich’ in absolute rather than relative terms, then yeah, there’s no apparent reason why not. There’s no law of physics forbidding everyone from having a mansion and a yacht.
The answer is No. If everyone had sufficient wealth to get “whatever they want”…nobody would work. Resulting in nobody providing any services or manufacturing anything. There would be no incentive.
Inflation would skyrocket. And the playing field would level itself out.
Do ppl really want nice cars, mansion and yachts? I guess I’m naive because I have no desire for things I just assumed ppl are being hyperbolic when they say they want them
Being rich means not having to worry financially with reasonable living. Reasonable, not frugal.
What you’re describing is ultra-rich. As you said, billionaire lifestyle. It’s wasteful and greedy; over-using minerals that are better suited for medical equipment than super-cars, just to give a concrete example.
I don’t think so. Top 10 wealthiest people in the world have a summed net worth of approximately $1.6 trillion. There are 8 billion people in the world. Take those top 10 wealthiest, accidentally feed them to bears, and take their money and redistribute it to everyone… that’s about $200 per person. Not mansion and yacht money.
Rich is a relative term.
Relative to just a 100 years ago, most people on the planet are in unfathomable luxury. Medicine, food, entertainment. Mind blowing relative to 1920.
If you mean rich as in highest possible standard enjoyed by westerners today, no.
The basic problem is that on our current technology stack and resource consumption, there are not enough resources in the globe to live like that.
With sufficient automation – which isn’t that far away – maybe for a few hundred million people. Maybe even a billion or two. But definitely not 8+.
Energy is a bottleneck.
After that, it’s prime real estate with is definitionally finite.
It is not possible for everyone to be considered “rich” however the average person in the West today lives on par or better then a billionaire 400 years ago as we have indoor plumbing, access to decent enough healthcare, access to information from across the world, access to enough clean and healthy food to hold a feast, food from across the world, air conditioning, access to synthetic fibers to make clothing, electricity, access to lighting 24/7, access to transportation to anywhere in the world cheaply (a few hundred to a couple thousand USD depending on where you go and maybe a day or two of travel instead of weeks of travel). We also have the ability to contact anyone in the world at any time as well as playing games at near real time. I would say the average person would be considered rich at any point in history. Phones were a luxury, computers were a luxury, cars are still a luxury item, access to the internet too.
I think we could at very least even it out a little bit
Not in the way you’re describing. No one would do any work for everyone to have all those things. And it’s just not feasible even if we all lived like that. Could you imagine thousands of private jets trying to leave a major city’s airport every hour? And trying to get in our yachts? We would work ourselves back into commerical airline travel and nice cruises.
Not with our society
Capitalism needs thd poor to feed it..if we are all rich you get hyper inflation.
This idea works if we are star trek.
Depends what you mean.
Relative to times in the past, a lot of average experiences, at least in first world countries, have a lot of accommodations that would be seen as a sign of trememdous wealth.
The “billionaire lifestyle” though is kinda a no-go since a lot of that involves passing duties off to servants, and staff. People could still do those duties voluntarily, but it can’t work out the same. On top of that, the amount of space a billionaire takes up is pretty enormous. All of earth’s land perfectly divided with no room for anything else but residences, everyone gets about 12 acres.
You also can’t get the social status for everyone since everyone is at the same level.
A lot of specific practices (like private jets) are too wasteful and/or logistically complicated to be done at scale, though some of them may be able to become plausible with technological advances.
So overall I’d say “mostly no”.
No, the entire idea of luxury is that you have what others don’t. If luxury starts to become affordable then people create something else and slap a big price tag on it. Rich folks want things that others don’t have, even though common items will do the trick. Cars, homes, art, etc.
It maybe possible in the future. Take for example the median income household American’s life style, it can be compared to one of a King in the medieval time for a developed civilization. High quality food available readily, home appliances replaced servants to free up time, a wagon that takes you wherever you want to go without breaking a sweat in 90 degree weather, access to the finest clothes from around the world etc.
Is it possible for everyone on earth to have a home, access to clean water, to not be hungry, have access to education and medical care? Yes that’s possible.
And on that day we will all be rich.
Not billionaires, not obsessed with accumulating things. When everyone in the world gets an even break and a fair chance we will have taken the first step to being a civilised planet.
There’s not enough space for everyone to be a king in a castle.
No cause for someone to win someone else must lose.
Rich is also a baseline. Above this arbitrary line by a significant amount, you are rich. Above the line by a little, you are middle class and somewhat rich. Below this line, you are poor. Everything will cost an appropriate amount to develop this line so it will never be possible for everyone to be rich. There might be a day where we don’t have ultra poor or homeless but there will always be poor people.
No. Rich is a relative comparison.
What you are talking about is raising the standard of living for everyone.
It has happened over time but is a slow gradual process.
It is simply not possible for everyone to have luxury goods unless we have robots doing all of our labor. It takes a lot of time an effort to make exceptional things and there are not enough people capable of making that many luxury items.
Additionally, there is not enough room for everyone to have their own mansion. Maybe once we can make better skyscrapers, but for now land that people actually want to live on is a scarce commodity.
No, but it is possible for everyone to live prosperous and satisfying lives.
I would say for everyone to live a billionaire lifestyle is impossible due to the resources needed to sustain it and if everyone is that rich nobody will be working to gather materials, assemble stuff, and sell them. If everyone were this rich, ultimately nothing would have monetary value and money would become too arbitrary to even thing about because if everyone has more than they could ever spend, then money would be unnecessary.
I do think it’s possible for everyone to have their basic needs taken care of and live comfortably. The money and resources exist, we are just too clouded by greed to actually implement it.
Yes, exclusion and exclusivity are the lifeblood of hoarded wealth.
No, it’s not possible. Because nobody will do the work that is needed to run this world. imagine you have a business, and all of your employees have choices come to work or they can take day off any day they want or can leave work any time they want. How many days will it take you to file for bankruptcy?
Rich is a mindset. I think in 1960 the US achieved the greatest achieved something like the greatest living conditions in the history of the world for the average person by certain metrics. I don’t recall the exact stat. Things like cars in general, AC, running water, and refrigeration are greater perks than royalty would have not so long ago. Today’s luxuries will eventually become common but new luxuries will be developed, especially for artificial scarcity and status.