Except that, for the elite, it's not about happiness. It's about power and winning.

It's also just plain about the money. There was a quote floating around some years ago from a Dutch economist who'd stated at some big conference: "It may not be profitable to slow decline." That's the kind of insanity behind the growth paradigm. And the more I think about all this the more I am convinced the rich/elite are just plain bonkers... once upon a time, the overlords accumulated wealth as a means of consolidating power. Now they accumulate power for the sake of consolidating not wealth, but fiat currency notes — which they themselves have designed to be ultimately worthless — represented in binary code that is irretrievable without electricity. It is as if currency notes have replaced the sun as humanity's primary focus of worship and sacrifice.