punctuated stairsteps down. sure there are crashes but its never that one crash that is the crash there is always the next one. 2008 was a crash , lots of people didnt really recover but we move on. the decline can still last a life time and we never cross the proverbial "collapse" where everyone busts out their bondage outfits and dunebuggies . People still go to work every day, people still need doctors , doctors still make more than day laborers , people still own stuff and parasitize those who dont etc...

Most people in collapse forums talk about collapse but have no real metric to measure by. I would look at global population , global "real" gdp, global institution size ie.. supernational instituions like European union cracking up then later nations that were put together based on nonsense balkanizing. Life expectancy global and local. etc..