That's roughly my view, too. Westerners are taught idealism and liberal individualism. It only works at a certain stage of development. It certainly doesn't work when material reality falls on your head.

There are people who think they could go back to medieval times and make something in the woods to kick start their own merchant empire and eventually become an aristocrat. In reality, they'd be beheaded before they bulk bought their first gander of geese.

Depending on how things go in a collapse situation, relying on organised exploitation isn't going to go very well. Not without state-backed violence. Especially when it might have to rely on organising westerners to do jobs they've been conditioned to think are beneath them. Without food because there isn't a state to prevent famines or out wildfires, etc.

It's not just the US. Westerners in general have zero comprehension of the fact that they have an average of up to seven servants/slaves each to support their lifestyle. Of course, impoverished westerners don't get the same benefit; which means it'll be those workers who organise to protect themselves from a weakened bourgeois class that tries to force hundreds of millions of working westerners back into coal mines and building with asbestos fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, without schooling for their kids, and with severely limited food. Ain't gonna work.

The vanguard will emerge out of the first signs of rubble and that will be that. (I'm in an optimistic mood today.)