This is a really good question. What does a post-consumer society look like?

The middle class is an anomaly that occurs when the profit from labor makes it worthwhile. If labor is no longer worth more than the cost of food, then there are 2 options: a welfare state or a cull. To do otherwise is to invite revolt.

I suspect that Luigi is being used as a means to prepare for a cull. By inflating the situation, they are manufacturing consent regarding the right to own advanced weaponry. These could start with semi-autonomous drones, such as the Boston Dynamics dogs. We’ve already seen similar robots with flamethrowers. Later upgrades would make them fully autonomous.

At some point, they will be used for riot control and there will be “terrible accident” caused by “an unforeseen reaction to the violence of the protesters.” It will be very sad and there will be no repercussions because of a law that excuses AI mistakes on the grounds that AIs are very useful and hard to make correct.

After an investigation, it will be determined that the best way to prevent similar mistakes is early intervention. Machines will be spread throughout the city and, nominally, working for a government that’s really just trying to keep up the appearance that it hasn’t lost control.

Announcing an impending bankruptcy has the potential to hasten it or, in some cases, cause it. Employees and customers are usually kept in the dark while management and investors know.

Canadian checking in. A bike will never be a replacement for a truck (the best kind of vehicle for city driving) until the front basket can be mounted high enough that the rider cannot see a child in front of them.

This reminds me of PayPal from 25ish years ago. There wasn’t a convenient way to transfer money online and they built a solution. To achieve critical mass, they offered people $10 to sign up and a $10 referral bonus (if your friend get $10 and you get $10). PayPal burned a lot of investor money to do this, but it paid off when they became the dominant payment method for eBay auctions. In short, it was a costly investment that paid off.

Klarna is trying to become the PayPal of e-commerce, displacing credit cards (and PayPal) and becoming the default means of paying online. Once they start to slow in their growth, they can do the following:

• Charge merchant fees.
• Charge service fees.
• Charge interest, (waiving it for debit-like transactions).
• Offer purchaser subscriptions with enhanced features and reduced costs.
• Push exclusivity agreements by offering discounts against steep fees.
• Sell data.

This last point is particularly powerful because they also have the bill of sale, which most payment options don’t. If they offer point-of-sale systems that also collect detailed data, it would further allow them to track people.

I suspect that they are classified in a way that existing restrictions on payment networks do not apply to them. E.g., they may technically be a lending company but act as a payment network; they may be considered the customer in a transaction, that resells the item to the purchaser, etc. Lending companies aren’t expected to work with the copious amounts of detailed data that stores and payment processors do (e.g., Payday Loan doesn’t know I spent part of my loan on a suitcase of Bud Light). Imagine an insurance company knowing how many drinks your table bought at a restaurant, then holding it against you when you make a claim. Or having a job offer revoked because you bought a copy of the Communist Manifesto to see what all the hubbub is about.

Pedant rant:

I take issue with ‘needs a lot of work’, though it is common phrasing. It promotes the false idea that ‘business is more efficient’ by making it sound like the public administrators are too dumb to know how to do their job.

The real issue, in most jurisdictions, is that it needs more and stable funding, and less political interference.