Comment by ben_w

> If there are no consumers then why even bother producing?

> If the producers refuse to lower their prices then they either don’t participate in the market (which also means their production is pointless) or ensure some other way that the consumers can buy their products.

Imagine you're a billionaire with a data centre and golden horde of androids.

You're the consumer, the robots make stuff for you; they don't make stuff for anyone else, just you, in the same way and for the same reason that your power tools and kitchen appliances don't commute to work — you could, if you wanted, lend them to people, just like those other appliances, but you'd have to actually choose to, it wouldn't be a natural consequence of the free market.

Their production is, indeed, pointless. This doesn't help anyone else eat. The moment anyone can afford to move from "have not" to "have", they drop out of the demand market for everyone else's economic output.

I don't know how big the impact of dropping out would be: the right says "trickle down economics" is good and this would be the exact opposite of that; while the left criticism's of trickle-down economics is that in practice the super-rich already have so much stuff that making them richer doesn't enrich anyone else who might service them, so if the right is correct then this is bad but if the left is correct then this makes very little difference.

Unfortunately, "nobody knows" is a great way to get a market panic all by itself.