a selfish rant about the fifty rich

Sometimes I get the impression that, in the future, there will be about 50 rich people, with the rest 10,000,000,000 or so as slave drones, wearing explosive neck collars wired to detect activity in the part of the brain responsible for questioning authority. That's all.

50 rich people.

100 million -- not ten billion -- people as slave drones.

Kept in line by fear of starvation, not electronic slave collars.

The rich may be driving us into a dark age, but they're going to kill a lot of people along the way.

--bkl

Exploring ship reaches planet. Planet is half-covered with some sort of machinery, whose only purpose seems to be gather materials and energy to keep a gigantic supercomputer running. This supercomputer's only purpose is to create a Matrix-like world of infinite pleasure for one conserved human brain -- The One Winner Of Capitalism. All other life has been consumed.

In my story, the explorers manage to reach the central location (insert fighting sequences against robot armies here) and find out that, unknown by the machines, the "winner's" brain has died centuries ago -- the machines have been running for nothing ever since. In the end, they nuke the failed planet.

The traitor who leaked that to you will be wearing the prototype explosive neck collar by the end of the week.