Are you poor? Here's your virtual hamster cage

WHAT are the limits of inequality? In a world with virtual reality, history might be an unreliable guide. Time was you could imagine a peasant revolt: If the poorest were starving, they wouldn't wait around patiently for political change. Riots would disrupt the status quo.

If things were really bad, the army might join in. Self-preservation would then compel elites to respond by redistributing wealth, rather than continuing to hoard resources. For a while, society would be more equal. In the developed world, however, the poor aren't necessarily poor enough for that scenario to play out. Instead, the folks at the bottom of the wealth spectrum live in a grey area of hopelessness, opioid addiction and other slow-motion suicide on the one hand, and Medicaid work requirements, drug tests, and other attempts to shame them as undeserving on the other. I can picture three ways society might go from here.

The US is arguably well down the sadistic road. Consider, for example, reports that Facebook has figured out how to determine a person's class based on information such as education and Internet use. Such technology could allow advertisers to ignore - or target - entire swathes of users according to their place in the social hierarchy (as opposed to their race, a practice with which Facebook has had some issues).