The last time the industrial world went belly flopping it was pulled out by a combination of the destruction of plant by bombing and other destruction during WW 2 and an immediate rise in non-working population, the Baby Boom.  

Now we've got excess industrial capacity out of our ears and a workforce slowly losing, or having in the first place, any ability to purchase the goods produced.  

And we can't continue to endlessly throw cheap energy at the problem.

I can see the potential for industrial feudalism to arise.  I don't see it persisting as there's too many contradictions between the non-innovative mind set one has to inculcate in any highly stratified society and the "inventing invention" nature of a technological industrial economy.

 

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre