No Stupid Questions

They don’t think about endgame. The life they live is one without consequence; they have no intention to start thinking ahead, that’d make them uncomfortable.

Also, this endgame is already manifesting. Remember all those headlines about millennials killing “X” industry? Less wealth in the working class for luxuries that previous generations would have enjoyed at the same age. Before long it’ll be not enough wealth for certain luxuries outright.

The rich don’t care about money, they care about capital. They want to own every house, automobile, factory, and natural resources. Money is a very temporary store of value so more assets can be purchased.

Implying their train of thought can go beyond "MOAR MONEH"

Also, they'd love to be slave owners, but since slavery was banned in most of the world, they have to skirt around with silly laws and whatnot, so wage-slavery works. Hell, it might even work better than actual slavery, since you can own all the stuff the wage-slave can buy and pay for!

the conspiracy brain in me, looks at ranting from people like elon musk, who say there's going to be a population collapse, and Im thinking of Resident evil, (the bad movies).

I think they're banking on the hope that in 20 years there's going to be billions fewer people in the world, we're already close to setting it off with the unprecedented increase of state vs state wars since 2020. Azerbaijan/Armenia, Israel/Levant, and even bigger ones that we've not seen since the 80s like Russia/Ukraine and with all probability, China/Taiwan by 2028 at the latest.

they're banking on there being less people to feed, house, and otherwise provide for. so they can fall back to a kind of corpo-feudalism

Then the Reaganomics kick in

I think the movie Elysium is basically what they want.

There are 3 key necessities for UBI/freedom dividends:

1. It redistributes power not wealth. Bad greed is oligarchy capturing your rulers. UBI weakens politicians discretion, because just paying everyone more cash instead of their corrupt ideas is "idiocracy proof". Power redistributed to workers where everyone who wants a job gets 5 recruiter calls per day offering a better job. We all get greater power to say no to anything. Quality of life becomes exceptional without crimes of desperation, and the divisive hate that is easily manufactured from crime.

2. Redistribution means massive economic growth and overall prosperity even as it all trickles up to make the rich richer. "Velocity of money" is the key economic concept, but as income trickles back up to workers and owners, it means that the rich have to invest more to take all of our money.

3. The alternative is genocide. Oligarchy having all of the money and power, and AI/robotics to do work, means robocop detroit for Americans, and war on rest of the world to take their land. It doesn't matter that far more wealth can be generated with more people to sell stuff to. The logic of pillaging America/world for oligarchs with ever decreasing tax rates on corporations and the rich means more relative wealth and power for the oligarchy and its political minions.

This 3rd point is similar to yours. Except its not just "This is America, if you don't make money you're a douchebag", and the rich just give up on life, it's "you need to be exterminated because you are useless to the rulership."

It's probably something like the story within the story For the Benefit of Mankind by Liu Cixin.

There isn't an endgame.

Slavery for us, power for them. That’s it. We get nothing, they get everything.

This leads to the total collapse of global society

The same as with all cancers unless it's killed in time.

If they thought as effectively as the question in the title, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.

What’s the endgame for them if their current path takes them to a point where their assets are more or less worthless?

Get too rich, too powerful, burn the earth, and die happy before the consequences of their behavior catch up with them.

In the theoretical endgame employment is reduced to where there aren't enough people with money to be customers. There's a wave of consolidation as businesses with lots of cash buy failing ones, further concentrating wealth. Eventually the impoverished public gets desperate enough to riot and steal what they need, outnumbering law enforcement. The system no longer has the resources to protect itself, and we physically demolish our society. Then there's a reset back to a time of bartering.

You're supposed to recognize their undisputed superiority and turn yourselves into automatons for their pleasure, having no other options available to you.

Of course that never actually works, as it always ends up with someone like Moses or Jesus figuring out that you can, in fact, live perfectly fine in this world without their economic systems. As long as you're willing to deal with the natural world directly.