Rise to the top, crush what's below

Society operated under a cruel mathematical paradox: the expansion of wealth depended directly on the creation of scarcity. They were told that the economy was a ladder for everyone to climb, but the structure was built in such a way that each ascending rung demanded a corresponding burden on those at the base. Growth was not a shared victory, but a vertical pressure that intensified as one climbed.
Success was measured by the amount one could extract from the base. The "top" was a rarefied space maintained by the systematic narrowing of the "base," where poverty was not a flaw in the system, but a necessary fuel for its momentum. Each record profit was accompanied by an equally record struggle, as if the prosperity of the few was being squeezed from the very lives of the many.
This relentless pursuit of ascension created a world of profound instability. The higher the towers of wealth rose toward the clouds, the deeper the cracks in the ground became. They lived in a landscape of gleaming peaks and deep valleys, where the only way to ascend was to increase the weight that crushed everything—and everyone—below.