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I mean yeah, neo/techno-feudalism is the timeline we've collectively chosen here in the US.
But that still runs into the problem of capitalism collapsing significantly when it destroys its own demand via destroying its consumer base.
And it still means that a whole lot of people are basically just going to go literally insane, as the fabled promised bullshit of 'work hard and follow the rules and you'll be a billionaire too!' is more and more obviously exposed as a fantastic lie.
The cognitive dissonance will get worse and worse.
Some will actually conclude that everything they know is wrong... many others will not be able to do this, or manage that realization well, and they will become psychotic.
There is another wrinkle to what you're describing though.
Office space could have started to get transformed into residential space since covid made it obvious remote work is a viable paradigm, and thus commerical office space itself is significantly overvalued.
But they didn't let that happen. Partly because managers and C Suite are narcissistic sociopaths who need to live a life where they get to neg their employees in person.
Partly because if you revalue downtown office space property values, well, a whole lot of rich people become significantly less rich.
So what I am trying to say is... they wont let those property values dive, to the greatest extent possible, and they can literally just do cartel style price fixing to do this.
So it'll be they'll all just keep acting like their inner downtown core properties are absurdly valuable, and you'll be offered an indentured servitude contract where your downtown accommodations are fixed and rising, but your pay is variable and performance dependant.
No one who agrees to anything like that will ever get promoted to any substantially important position (barring an occasional selected token exception that proves the rule)... though they'll create an entire internal and external 'company culture' that incredibly strongly implies that they will, reinforced with app kinds of propoganda, media, social media, etc.
... things like this will just keep occuring and get worse untill the proles basically kill these kinds of people. Otherwise, they'll just keep churning through the proles.
The city is the plantation now.
First, they are already solving the demand problem:
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/09/17/top-10-of-earners-make-up-half-of-us-retail-spending
The very small group of people with "important" positions in corporations will still be allowed participate in the wealth and drive demand. Everyone else will be forced to buy basic products like food and water at crazy prices basically giving away all income back to the corporation. Some tariffs, couple of wars and annexations will make sure they are not losing money.
You're right about the office space property values. They will most likely not convert it into apartments. Better solution is to just allow workers to sleep under their desks. You get to keep your office space and workers don't have to drive. You wold obviously have to charge them some rent to cover the energy use during night but it wouldn't be that high. At first.
Yes you bring up good points!
I think we're both basically seeing the same kind of likely future, just from slightly different angles, or via slightly different extrapolated examples.
Yeah.
Yeah shit's lookin pretty bleak right now.
For me this was always the future presented in many American SF movies and shows. Couple of nice office building in the center, elites living the American dream and slums full of wage slaves everywhere else. Running Man, Bladerunner, Robocop, In Time, Corporate, Altered Carbon ... They all nailed it.
Basically same, I guess I was just a fool to think that people would interperet those as pointed warnings and criticisms, not fucking instruction manuals.