Technocracy. We'll all live in small flats, every move monitored, resources 'correctly' allocated, quarterly 'health' shots, no cars, we'll see very little nature.
I think the future will be more diverse, and what you describe is probably one direction it will go. But there are also many other directions, like people living off grid aided by varying amounts of cheap technology, etc.
There is actually a lot of land left in the world (even in the US and Canada) if you want to take on the hardships of not interacting with society. Judging by what I see say on YouTube, a lot of people want this!
Similar to paleo and other alternative diets as a reaction against industrial farming and food production, there's already a lot of reaction against big tech and technocracy. I think / I hope this time it won't take 50+ years to "properly react". Both industries brought us some good things but we have to be critical about what to adopt.
Also I had a friend who did this near the California/Nevada border. Super cheap land if you don't care about electricity and plumbing!
Michigan and California are both extremely populated states -- but MOST of them by land area is very sparsely populated.
I'm sure someone here knows more, but I think it's obvious if you just drive 30, 60, or 120 minutes outside any city in the US. There is a lot of land. All of it is probably owned, but the owners are probably not doing anything with it, and would sell it for a fair price, which is low.
Hell there is even land in San Francisco if you've ever biked between San Francisco and South San Francisco. Again, it's owned, but it's not doing very much.
There are huge swathes of unpopulated land across the world.
However in many areas the local zoning rules prevent you building on them.
In Australia for instance, thousands of acres of Rural land have been rezoned as "Farming", which means that you can't build a house on less than 100 acres. And of course the only ones who benefit are the corrupt real-estate developers.
The future will be miserable, unless you live in China. In China, the future will arrive as planned as China will once again become the middle kingdom and be bestowed with the mandate of heaven. In the west, the 200 years of western industrial society will be regarded as a mistake that must be payed for dearly with carbon credits.
Jeez. You people catch nuance like a chainlink fence catches mosquitoes. I'm not saying that I buy into the "kill the old" thing. I'm just saying it's the natural evolution of our society. Aristocrats get gilded, serfs get grinded.
> We'll invent a rationale for that eventually. 20 years of retirement is just an unnecessary drain on the economy.
I
n the UK there's already some disdain for 'boomers' because they're getting state pensions and are quite likely to own several mortgage-free houses. Tax rises only affect those currently working so young people people get irked at having to pay more into a system where they're unlikely to get much out. It's not entirely unjustified but the assumption that 'boomer's got stuff for free isn't necessarily true.
It's a interesting development and worth watching.
My, how far we've come...