At some point, the average worker will have a bed of tethered and haggardly weathered rags, with an income gap growing. Seems the restructuring going on of society benefits mostly the rich. Race to the bottom economics will collapse a society, like the housing market did in the States in the late 2000s. But by then, the rich will have scourged and developed the means to live elsewhere.
@awildsheepschase Yes, that was one sign of the collapse. The Roman "middle class" largely disappeared during the late Roman Republic and early Empire, not just at the end, as economic conditions deteriorated, free labor was undercut by slave labor, and wealthy landowners consolidated estates, leading to greater poverty and dependency. At the end of the Western Roman Empire, this decline continued with factors like invasion, population loss, and disruption of trade, which further reduced urban centers and commercial opportunities, effectively eliminating the remnants of a formerly diverse middle stratum
