I keep hearing this. But for that to work, the elites have to have a bunch of money available, that didn't lose value when everything fell apart. Well, where are they parking that money right now, that won't lose value when everything else does?
I suppose that you could keep gold or bitcoin wallets in a vault, but then it actually belongs to the vault guards, not to you.
Basically you need a collapse that's bad enough to shrink asset prices but not bad enough to break the social contact.