In the 90s, people were worrying about the efficiency of education workers and the profitability of the Internet backbone companies; which is when US Networks (

In the 90s, people were worrying about the efficiency of education workers and the profitability of the Internet backbone companies; which is when US Networks (iirc?) absorbed every local dialup ISO nationwide in order to monopolize. What’s going to happen next will probably more closely resemble the early 20th century in economic crash, when the population goes through a subprime debt cutoff for the 25% of U.S. households who can’t afford 1-bedroom rent, starving a lot of corporations of the workers and buyers that are propping up “run it until the well is dry” businesses (after their workers’ cars are repossessed and there’s no unprofitable public transit to compensate). Much of this era’s political exploitation is under the banner “privatization”, which is simply trying to open up more markets that can be harvested until the field is barren, as otherwise they’d have to invest in the ones that have already been destroyed. So look for government-regulated monopolies that cannot be run at a profit — as an example, the postal mail has been a multi-decade quest for this outcome. Privatized sewers and roadway services (planning, paving, painting, signaling) come to mind; imagine how much profit a company could generate by forcing an entire city to toll roads in order to extract the most profit for the rich owners, etc.