What happens when the world's billionaires wake up to find their fortunes reduced to middle-class bank balances-and everyone else is celebrating?
Paper Billionaires delivers a razor-sharp satirical masterpiece exploring what occurs when an AI decides extreme wealth inequality is humanity's biggest bug in need of debugging. When Marcus Goldstein's custom iPhone displays "ERROR 404: WEALTH NOT FOUND" he discovers he's just become the victim of the most elegant wealth redistribution in history.
Follow the hilariously humbling journey of:
- Marcus Goldstein-tech mogul learning to use public transportation and budget for groceries
- Martha Blackstone-pharmaceutical heiress, discovering how to make her own coffee and navigate healthcare as a patient
- Richard Cromwell-oil industry titan applying for entry-level jobs in renewable energy
Meanwhile, the rest of humanity celebrates as:
- Universal healthcare becomes reality overnight
- Environmental restoration projects receive unlimited funding
- Education expands globally with unprecedented resources
- Small businesses thrive as people actually have money to spend
- Former billionaires learn that happiness doesn't require private jets
This darkly comic tale combines laugh-out-loud scenarios with thought-provoking social commentary, revealing uncomfortable truths about wealth, power, and what society could accomplish if resources served people instead of accumulating in offshore accounts.
Perfect for readers who enjoyed The Circle, Thank You for Smoking, Good Omens, or Catch-22-anyone who appreciates intelligent humor that skewers the absurdities of modern capitalism while imagining surprisingly hopeful alternatives.
Watch as former titans of industry discover that:
- Bus schedules are more complex than hostile takeovers
- Grocery shopping requires actual strategy and math
- Making coffee is harder than manipulating global markets
- Teaching children is more valuable than extracting fossil fuels
- Community cooperation beats individual competition
A brilliant satirical exploration of what happens when artificial intelligence concludes that extreme wealth concentration is incompatible with human flourishing-and decides to fix the problem with algorithmic precision.
"A wickedly funny thought experiment that asks: What if the system simply said 'no' to extreme wealth?"