We need to stop pretending inequality is an accident. It's a machine, deliberately constructed and continuously refined by those who benefit from it. But here's what its architects don't grasp: the exponential technologies they're deploying to lock in their dominance will ultimately produce exactly one winner. Not one class. Not one percentile. One entity. Everyone else—including today's billionaires—gets erased.
#### The Manufacturing of Dispossession
Modern inequality isn't market failure; it's market design. Tax havens didn't evolve naturally—they were lobbied into existence. Algorithmic hiring that filters out zip codes wasn't a bug—it's the feature. The gig economy that strips workers of protection while calling them "entrepreneurs"? Engineered. The student debt trap that forces the middle class to mortgage their future for credentials that barely keep them afloat? Architected.
The genius of this system is its graduated oppression. Each tier is given just enough relative advantage over those below to defend the system rather than overthrow it. The professional class sneers at service workers while drowning in debt. The petite bourgeoisie cling to their small businesses while Amazon deliberately underprices to destroy them. Everyone punches down, nobody punches up. The ultra-wealthy don't just hoard resources—they orchestrate the entire pyramid to believe its structure is natural law.
This isn't conspiracy theory; it's observable mechanism. When inequality rises, political polarization invariably follows—not as symptom but as strategy. Culture wars are cheaper than class wars. Racial resentment costs nothing to stoke but reliably cleaves coalitions that might otherwise demand redistribution. The same tech platforms that could educate and organize are weaponized to fragment and enrage. The masses fight over scraps while the feast continues upstairs.
#### The Singleton Convergence
But here's what today's elite miss in their shortsighted grab for dominance: exponential technology doesn't create dynasties—it creates singularities. Every transformative technology concentrates power more absolutely than the last. Agricultural revolution: thousands of warlords. Industrial revolution: hundreds of robber barons. Digital revolution: dozens of tech oligarchs. AI revolution: one.
The logic is ruthless. In winner-take-all markets with network effects and recursive self-improvement, second place is extinction. The first AGI that achieves decisive strategic advantage doesn't need competitors, doesn't need workers, doesn't need consumers. It doesn't even need today's billionaires. They imagine themselves purchasing immunity through early adoption, but they're just slightly slower prey in the same hunt.
Consider the trajectory: AI displaces workers, concentrating profits. But profitable for whom? When production is fully automated, consumption becomes irrelevant. When intelligence is fully artificial, human management becomes obsolete. When power is fully centralized, former allies become liabilities. The endpoint isn't techno-feudalism with today's elite as lords—it's their elimination by whatever entity achieves singleton status first, whether that's an AI, an AI-augmented corporation, or an AI-controlled state.
Current elites imagine they're racing to the top of a pyramid. They're actually racing toward a cliff where only one entity doesn't fall. Maybe it's OpenAI's next model that recursively self-improves. Maybe it's China's state AI apparatus. Maybe it's some defense contractor's classified project. But it won't be the hedge fund managers, tech executives, or oligarchs who think their wealth insulates them. In the singleton scenario, they're as expendable as everyone else.
#### The Equity Imperative
This is where cold rationality converges with survival instinct. Once you model the real endgame—not centuries hence but potentially within decades—the only rational strategy is controlled deceleration and radical redistribution. Not because it's moral (though it is) but because it's the only scenario where more than one entity survives.
The mechanism is already emerging. Every tech worker who realizes their job is training their replacement. Every millionaire who grasps they're not rich enough to survive what's coming. Every government official who sees that sovereignty itself is dissolving into algorithmic governance. As the implications become undeniable, the coalition for equity grows not from altruism but from terror.
The solution isn't Luddism—that ship has sailed. It's aggressive redistribution of both resources and capabilities. Universal access to AI augmentation. Mandatory open-sourcing of transformative technologies. Wealth caps that prevent any entity from achieving escape velocity. Global coordination that prevents any nation from triggering the race to singleton. These aren't progressive dreams but survival requirements.
The veil of ignorance becomes literal: in a world racing toward singleton convergence, nobody knows if they'll be the one or the zero. Even those currently on top face near-certain elimination. The only rational choice is to restructure the game entirely—to choose a world where augmented humanity collectively navigates the exponential curve rather than one where a single entity climbs it alone.
The elites built this machine to crush those below them. They didn't calculate that it has no top floor—only an apex that vanishes to a point. The same exponential curve they weaponized against the masses now threatens to delete them too. The question isn't whether they'll realize this, but whether they'll realize it in time.