A confederation of autonomous zones run horizontally under anarchist principles, a la Rojava, the Makhnovshchina, Catalonia, etc etc. Presumably for many types of collapse, there’d be a gradual period where the government just cuts off services to increasingly populated areas and abandons them. Autonomous zones like these could spring up to fill the void, and eventually be better than what they’re replacing.

Best for humans, or best overall?

Like me personally or like societally?

I feel like the most likely sort of collapse would be a Roman empire style collapse where it takes centuries to reach completion and we see a period of increased governmental instability/local authoritarianism for a little bit. The most likely cause would be some sort of climate disaster. It probably wouldn’t happen everywhere either, the Byzantine empire lasted well into the middle ages, after all, going on the Rome metaphor. The best strategy would be to move somewhere less effected by the collapse with a hospitable enough climate to support local food production, and enough resources to ensure long-term maintenance of infrastructure. The Great Lakes area of the US/Canada fits this pretty well

Basically high tech elves. Having passed through a self imposed disaster, humanity faces it’s destructive greed and overcomes it, achieving a profound integration with nature, while retaining the technical knowledge of the past. The new culture is stable and long lasting, and heals the blighted areas of the planet. The ecosystem becomes more resilient and more abundant than ever before.

Wait, off topic, does posting a anti commercial license to a comment made on someone else’s network and platform and storage actually provide you durable rights related to the usage of your comment content?

Could that ever be defended if the network maintainers don’t themselves support and agree to that?