You are writing a horror story right?

Sadly, I don't think you are. I fully acknowledge the ability of VR to replace reality (hell, our dreams prove that) but there is no reason to contemplate severed heads to make that happen.

Don't get locked into the scarcity mindset of @anarcho-andrei. Consider that AI and BCI will enable us to increase production, including by moving it off world, such that we can augment the native ecosystems of the Earth, rather than depleting them, as we have up to now.

Better management will produce better results. Remember your first boss? Do you think the best minds extant could do a better job managing than they did? That's the kind of qualitative leap that we can expect - the very best minds, not whoever inherited the money, or stole it from crack dealers with a shotgun, to buy the business.

As an aside, one of my formative memories is of my first boss yanking out his crank and pissing all over his shoes as we walked across a parking lot where he was going to show me how to fix plugged chemical toilets. You can hardly imagine my horror at the prospect, given his crude manners.

I, for one, will welcome our robot overlords, when they deign to free us from our own ignorance and prejudice.