It ends when cow/calf guys get tired of low bids and quit, causing buyer interest to wane and auction marts to shut down. Those who can background at low prices and make money doing it will thrive, as will those cow/calf guys that can live with the prices given by those same backgrounders. Everybody else will likely perish. High-cost producers have high mortality rates in this industry, especially in downturns, which we have yet to see in the last 5 years. But even that is unreliably skewed as more producers take off-farm income to subsidize a money-losing high-cost operation or enter land into crop production to do the same thing.
Cattle will never go the way of hogs and chickens. In fact, hogs and chickens will go the other way as the public clamps down on animal welfare regarding animals being raised in confinement systems. Can see pig and chicken barns without open air/sunlight access being banned in my lifetime. Doesn't mean the price will go up, just means the standards will change and producers will have to adapt or leave.