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In addition there are opportunity costs, that are hard to quantify. Mugabe may be personally well off because he keeps the revenue from the national resources that he sells abroad, and some of this wealth may even extend to his inner circle, but the much larger circle of potential entrepreneurs are losers.
In many cases it isn't the peasants who revolt, it is the business community that can't operate. This "revolt" may not take a violent turn, but may still be able to force change. Perhaps this is why support for removing Musharraf finds backers among many political factions.
Then there are the even more indirect effects that may result in stifling innovation and economic expansion. A slave owner may have had a comfortable life sipping his mint juleps, but he couldn't attend the theater, the local society couldn't support this type of infrastructure. There were just too few people rich enough to maintain a cultural climate. To do this one needed a merchant class as well.
Bill Gates would never have been able to create his business in an undeveloped country. He needed not only a skilled workforce, but an educated customer base. Many capitalists have come to the same conclusion - Andrew Carnegie was probably the first notable example. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
I think it very remains to be seen if the a-national plutocrat class can effectively insulate themselves from the fate of their flunkies, and of the common rabble. They only need a small group of middle class followers (technicians, musicians, artists working in symbolic archaic media, doctors) to keep the fed, watered and entertained. I see no indication that volunteers for this role will be difficult to find. They'll move them to the space station or a custom Diamond Age island in the midst of the sea, if necessary.
The reference to Diamond Age was more a allusion to delusions of the elite rather than a prediction of any sort. If I were to predict, I'd be thinking more Snow Crash, or else, par preference, All Tomorrow's Parties.
Meanwhile, if the rich can't build diamandoid islands, they can buy Paraguay. Or London. Or Dubai, more likely, which is a fabulous example of what these people in fact have in (what we may as well call a) mind. A totally artificial slave state built on foundations of sand and artfully situated by the rising tide.
