Elysium!

You’re not wrong. And anybody who could afford to stop them is too busy fighting a culture war to organize. Who do you think is stoking animosity? MLKJ wasn’t assassinated for civil rights, it was for the Poor Peoples Campaign. The only thing that could stop them is the unity of all those living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of religion or race.

Good sci fi usually isn't about the future, aliens, etc. It's about the present, but portrayed in a strange way so as to bypass your existing preconceptions about the situation, so you can look at it with fresh eyes.

All I know is the second the very second that we are sure they're starting to build the cloud cities, we need to start murdering people. You can't let him finish the cloud cities. Cannot happen. The second construction starts we start cutting off heads. That's our only chance.

It is almost like Elysium was a metaphor for something

Same as it ever was.

"Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration," == Mike Pondsmith (creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG)

People working 40 hours to make 10 things. Technology improves so that one person can make 20 things in 40 hours. People now get paid twice as much? People now only work 20 hours? Nope! Half as many people now work at the same pay. The rest have to go find something else to do.

It surprises me how many people dont realize that most rich people are rich because of poor people.

Stop change your phone each year, stop buying brand clothes, stop going to movie and music concerts. Start buying clothes by your local people, support new artists.

Well on the plus side cardboard drones laden with explosives are cheaper than ever. /s

I feel like we're actually the prequel to WALL-E

You should check out the movie Elysium.

Have you read/watched Alita: Battle Angel? That's the situation there.

It has never been any different. It's worse and exponentially more visible, but is not new by any means.

Every capitalist society trends towards this, as too do all other forms of society as well. Also remember that in the Western world, even someone who is next to outright homeless can have a better life than something like 90% of people around the globe - the water from most streams is safe to drink (unlike many places in Africa and South America), there are currently no missiles raining down from the sky (unlike Ukraine), if you have friends or family that you can stay with there is a good chance that someone can make room for you (unlike super crowded places where there are already ~20 families in a small household - and at the risk of repeating myself, yes I meant families there, not just people), plus with a mere handful of dollars we can get treatments for diseases that even Kings and Pharos of the past who were considered to be literal gods could not.

So it is a spectrum where we are not as well off as we used to be a few decades ago, but are still doing well globally speaking. The problem is that we are changing, so not yet used to there being such rigid divisions between "classes" of people as now exist, so people still talk as if mere hard work is all that is required to deal with it. And they aren't even fully wrong, bc that really is a part of it, though there is a significantly higher uphill battle than there used to be.

Just do your best - what else could you possibly do even? - and also remember that kinder people are happier people, and that is literally something that no amount of money can buy:-D.

No, we still have a chance.

We could stage a revolution, overthrow the oligarchs and restart with whatever we want.

But it ain't gonna happen.

This won't last for long. This capitalist with corporate socialism system has a short life span eventually what happens is inflation moves the poverty line far up enough that it collapses. Right now people are struggling to purchase just groceries compared to just last year. Either regulation or wages move up.

There was a point, around the end of the Gold Rush and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when they were still building that floating city, that the common man could work his way up and get on it. Unfortunately, as time has passed and conditions have changed, the floating city is now all but completely out of our reach.

Well yes, those stories are often written as critiques/analysis of real world culture

Well they have been buying up the Hawaiian islands. I think Larry Ellis, Zuckerberg and few others have bought a ton of property on Lanai or Molokai.

Children of Men always struck me this way

Isn't this the plot to elysium?

In all seriousness, its not impossible to go from the bottom to the top, but its definitely improbable. Anyone can do middle class. Just do middle class.

If you really want to go wild, sacrifice your pleasantries in order to save a bit and give it to your child a chance. Ill give you an example.

Jeff Bezos mother Jackie and father Tim when were 16 and 18 respectively when she was pregnant with Jeff. Jeffs first dad was a drunk asshole and they got divored. She met a Cuban Refugee named Miguel Bezos, who adopted Jeff. Jeff went and got himself into Princeton, where he graduated and started working for a financial tech company.

Now Miguel got his degree and was working for exxon. Thats how he was able to save up the $254k that he and Jackie loaned to Jeff. With that, he made an online bookstore called amazon.com. From there Jeff became the multi billionaire he is now. Oh, Jackie and Miguel got 6% each so they're billionaires too.

Now that's the American Dream. Even so, I think the question is, how rich is too rich?

We need Alita battle Angel

If you are young, they would trade a lot for the years you have left to live. Also, time value of money and all that. It's hard to fathom how powerful compounding is. Start investing small, start investing early.