They aren't. Nobody in power is so dumb they haven't thought of this yet - the scary idea is that those people in power don't think this is a problem, which implies the normal folk like us are either on our own or actively exterminated.

If the billionaire class doesn't think they need taxes or a workforce then what does that look like? If the population goes from 8B to like 5K + robots for the drudgery then all the problems go away - no more war, no more climate change, no famine, no large logistics problems.

I continually worry that these people in power see the rest of us as a nuisance to optimize away.

Why can't this happen now without AI?

- Certainly the current population level isn't needed to support the current number of billionaires. Isn't there about 1000 right now? I probably eat more than 2 or 3 of them.

- What happens in 100 years when the billionaires have kids and their kids have kids?