At that point, the parasites will be forced to start feeding on each other. Consider three sectors: Big Fast Food, Big Processed Food, and Big Pharma. All three have been handily growing revenues and profits for decades.
But Big Pharma's latest fountain of profits--GLP-1 weight-loss medications--is sucking off revenues and profits from Big Fast Food and Big Processed Food. Oops: the Big Pharma parasite is now feeding on two other parasites.
The landscape is now littered with parasites seeking other parasites to feed on. The Higher Education parasite, after decades of marvelous expansion feeding on the host's burgeoning student loan debt, finds itself starving as federal funding dries up just as demographics is shrinking the pool of incoming debt-serfs.
Oh dearie dearie me, what to do? There seems to be a dearth of other fat parasites to feed on. It now appears that the host was supporting far more parasites than was sustainable, and so some parasites will expire, others will be sucked dry by more aggressive parasites, and many others will be reduced to a struggle for their own survival.
The belief that the consumer-host is immortal was delusional. The host has been sucked dry and is one thin mint away from collapsing in a heap. The parasites have been feasting for so many decades that they've lost the ability to discern reality: their survival now depends on feeding on other parasites.
