>>6019616>federal, state, and municipal governments privatized into “franchises”, with competing interestsIt is not a bad idea, I did consider this but I was worried about it straying too far into the stereotypical cyberpunk private military contractor territory, or the Fallout style or Last Of Us post apocalyptic wasteland raiding gangs etc. The small wars journal blog has a lot of good details on this and if you have read William Gibson Periphery novels he explains about this concept called a CCA (Competitive Control Area - basically a lawless jurisdiction, the notion of many competing nonstate armed actors NAAs fighting for control over an area, the concept evolved in administration of Iraq and Afghanistan and a more recent one would be Haiti etc but more and more of the world seems to be spiralling towards it).
But I also thought about deliberately underplaying it, ie not even explaining or referencing this social fracture at all (see the fashion shopping boutique scene in the recent Alex Garland Civil War film). The idea is the collapse is almost unnoticeable
So a sort of near-collapse type setting, the infrastructure is still around but the social order is fraying. The film which I return to often as a reference is The Purge Anarchy (the second one) where society is still sort of normal looking, except... etc.
I also thought about going down the World Of Darkness masquerade route (ie the urban warfare gunfights occuring in the secret supernatural unmentionable vampire taboo world) but it felt too cliched to me. I also mentioned a narrative setup I considered on the last qtg from the Sofia Coppola Bling Ring film, raiding luxury celebrity houses lol (this is almost the exact setup of Tarkov loot scavenging lol, only with Kalashnikovs) but I was unsure of how to develop that scenario lol
pic related is the dress shopping scene from Alex Garland Civil War with Kirsten Dunst and that mentat guy from Dune
