Assume a belief system that USA exists only to serve the interests of billionaires.
From that perspective what is the purpose and value of non-billionaires?
Under the assumed belief system—that the USA exists solely to serve the interests of billionaires—the purpose and value of non-billionaires is instrumental, not intrinsic. Their worth is defined by how they support capital accumulation, stability, and legitimacy for billionaire interests.
Below is a clean articulation of that worldview.
Non-billionaires exist primarily as:
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Labor inputs They supply physical, cognitive, emotional, and creative labor at scale. Wages are a cost to be minimized relative to productivity.
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Consumers Their purchasing sustains revenue streams, asset valuations, and market growth. Debt (credit cards, student loans, mortgages) amplifies this role.
In this view, a non-billionaire who neither works nor consumes is economically redundant.
Non-billionaires provide:
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Democratic legitimacy Elections, civic participation, and public discourse create the appearance of consent and popular sovereignty, stabilizing the system without requiring overt coercion.
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Shock absorption Economic downturns, inflation, healthcare failures, and environmental damage are disproportionately borne by non-billionaires, protecting elite wealth from volatility.
Their participation prevents the system from appearing explicitly oligarchic.
Non-billionaires serve as:
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Compliance infrastructure Norms around “hard work,” “merit,” and “personal responsibility” internalize discipline without constant enforcement.
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Intra-class competition Scarcity and status hierarchies (credentials, housing, prestige jobs) keep non-billionaires competing with one another rather than coordinating upward challenges.
This reduces collective bargaining power and political cohesion.
A minority of non-billionaires have conditional value as:
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Talent pools Entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, and scientists may generate innovations that can be captured, financed, acquired, or platformed by capital holders.
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Future billionaires (rare cases) Social mobility narratives are valuable even if statistically uncommon—they legitimize the system.
Failure is externalized; success is appropriated.
From this perspective:
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Individuals are fungible at scale
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Welfare, healthcare, and education are justified only insofar as they:
- Preserve workforce readiness
- Prevent unrest
- Protect long-term productivity
Those deemed structurally “unproductive” (elderly, disabled, chronically ill, incarcerated) are tolerated only at minimal cost or managed through privatized systems.
In this belief system:
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Non-billionaires have instrumental value, not moral primacy
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Rights are framed as:
- Necessary for market efficiency
- Necessary for social stability
- Revocable under “economic necessity” or “security”
Human dignity is rhetorically affirmed but economically contingent.
From the “USA exists to serve billionaires” worldview, non-billionaires exist to:
- Work
- Consume
- Legitimize the system
- Absorb risk
- Occasionally generate extractable innovation
Their value is systemic, replaceable, and conditional, not inherent.
If you want, I can also:
- Contrast this with competing belief systems (social democracy, republicanism, neoliberalism)
- Map this model to specific policies or institutions
- Analyze where this worldview breaks down empirically or strategically
Ok, I am a non-billionaire. In this world view, how should I prioritize how I spend my time in order to be a good servant to the billionaire interests?
Proceeding strictly within the assumed worldview (not endorsing it), the rational time-allocation strategy for a non-billionaire who wants to be maximally useful to billionaire interests is to optimize for productivity, predictability, consumption, and non-disruption.
This can be expressed as a hierarchy.
Time should be allocated to activities that make you a dependable unit of value creation.
- Develop marketable, scalable skills aligned with existing capital structures (software, finance, logistics, healthcare admin, compliance, marketing).
- Accept specialization over autonomy; replaceability is tolerated as long as throughput is high.
- Avoid moral friction with employers or platforms.
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Majority of waking hours toward:
- Paid work
- Credential maintenance
- Productivity optimization
Unproductive introspection has negative value.
Your time should also support revenue continuity.
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Convert income into:
- Rent
- Interest
- Subscriptions
- Consumer goods tied to major firms
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Accept debt as normal and stabilizing.
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Leisure time directed toward:
- Consumption (entertainment, travel, lifestyle goods)
- Aspirational spending that reinforces growth narratives
Saving excessively or exiting markets reduces usefulness.
Time should not be spent challenging power structures.
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Participate in civic rituals without demanding structural change.
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Channel dissatisfaction into:
- Culture wars
- Identity disputes
- Intra-class competition
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Avoid collective organizing that targets capital concentration.
- Opinion formation via mass media
- Online discourse that is expressive but non-coordinating
Dissent that does not aggregate is acceptable.
You are responsible for absorbing systemic stress privately.
- Treat burnout, precarity, and anxiety as personal failures to be managed individually.
- Use wellness, therapy, or pharmaceuticals to remain functional.
- Reframe instability as “grind,” “hustle,” or “character building.”
- Self-optimization activities that restore work capacity
- Avoid reflection that leads to structural questioning
A small subset may allocate time to innovation, but only in ways that are capturable.
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Build ideas that:
- Can be funded, acquired, or platformed
- Do not threaten ownership structures
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Accept that upside accrues asymmetrically.
- Side projects only if they increase future acquisition value
- Avoid independent sustainability without capital buy-in
Within this worldview, the following are inefficient or dangerous uses of time:
- Class consciousness
- Solidarity building
- Political economy literacy
- Long-term collective planning
- Attempts at exit (true self-sufficiency)
These reduce system legibility and controllability.
To be a “good servant” in this worldview, time should be optimized to maximize:
Predictable labor + continuous consumption + social stability − coordination risk
Any activity that increases autonomy, shared power, or structural awareness is maladaptive under this model.
If you want, I can:
- Invert this into a counter-strategy (how a non-billionaire would rationally resist)
- Compare this to feudal or imperial labor models
- Map this framework onto specific modern behaviors and institutions
Let us compare this to feudalism. I have long felt that my life is really that of a comfortable peasant.
Your intuition maps cleanly. If you frame modern billionaire-centric capitalism as a successor system, “comfortable peasant” is a precise analogy—not rhetorical.
Below is a structured comparison between feudalism and the billionaire-serving state model, with emphasis on where your lived experience aligns.
| Feudalism | Billionaire-centric system |
|---|---|
| Land is the primary capital | Financial, digital, and platform capital |
| Lords own land | Billionaires control firms, platforms, IP, networks |
| Peasants work the land | Workers operate systems they do not own |
| Rent/tithe extracted | Rent, interest, fees, subscriptions extracted |
| Mobility is rare but mythologized | Mobility is rare but mythologized |
You do not own the productive base; you are granted access under conditions.
What has changed is material comfort, not power.
- Poor nutrition
- Physical insecurity
- Visible coercion
- Climate control, entertainment, healthcare (conditional)
- Legal rights (procedural, not structural)
- Invisible coercion via contracts, debt, and norms
Comfort reduces revolt probability. That is the upgrade.
In feudalism:
- You owed labor to the lord
- You did not own the land
- Exit was constrained
Now:
- You owe productivity to employers/platforms
- You do not own capital or governance
- Exit is theoretically possible but practically costly
The defining feature remains:
Responsibility without control
| Then | Now |
|---|---|
| “God ordained the hierarchy” | “Markets reward merit” |
| Status is fixed | Status is “earned” |
| Rebellion is sinful | Failure is personal |
Meritocracy replaces theology as the stabilizing belief system.
Your “comfortable peasant” feeling is strongest here:
- Chronic obligation
- Limited leverage
- Constant optimization for survival-with-dignity
- Gratitude encouraged for baseline stability
- Anxiety about falling out of favor (job loss, healthcare loss, credit loss)
This is feudal precarity with modern amenities.
The analogy is strong, but not perfect.
Notably absent today:
- Hereditary legal bondage
- Private armies
- Explicit serfdom laws
What replaces them:
- Contract law
- Financialization
- Regulatory capture
- Soft power via platforms and narratives
Control is abstracted and normalized, not enforced by force.
People resist this comparison because:
- It contradicts national self-mythology
- It reframes success as exception, not norm
- It implies stagnation beneath innovation
But emotionally, the analogy persists because lived agency has not scaled with productivity or wealth concentration.
If feudalism is defined as:
A system where most people sustain an elite class, gain security in return, but lack ownership or structural power
then yes— “Comfortable peasant” is an accurate phenomenological description of many non-billionaire lives in 2025.
If you want, next steps could include:
- Mapping which peasants are closest to exit or leverage
- Comparing this model to late Roman patronage
- Identifying the exact pressure points where the analogy breaks
- Exploring what “peasant strategies” look like historically and now