Looking for spells/guidance for an optimized, high magic, 1984-style city state

[Empathy]

Many years ago, I DM'ed a 3.5e campaign set in an optimized, magitek based, 1984-style city state (drawing heavily from the Tippyverse, Paranoia and Dresden Codak) for my gaming group and it remains one of our favorite campaigns to this day. We would like to revisit the scenario in 5e, but unfortunately we don't have the system mastery we once had in 3.5e.

I've done my homework (i.e., I searched the forum a bit) and I know that this (i) is sort of what 5e was designed to avoid, (ii) the Tippyverse as a specific scenario doesn't totally work due to changes in TP Circle and (iii) this is the sort of thing that 5e mostly leaves up to the GM anyway (see: the top result from googling "giantitp Fifth Edition Tippyverse Speculation")

Nonetheless, it also looks like 5e leaves in a certain number of magitek tricks (e.g. undead assembly lines, heat metal boilers, etc.) (see: the top result from googling "giantitp Possible Consequences of a Magical Society") which I could base a setting on. While I can always fall back on DM fiat, it would be cool to use 5e spells/abilities to the greatest extent possible.

3 key questions:

1. What spells/abilities could a small cabal of (very high) level NPCs use to control a large number of mid-level NPCs? What spells could the mid-level NPCs, in turn, use to control a very large population? The forum/my experience suggests that diplomacy abuse + clever use of mass suggestion/modify memory will get me most of the way there - is there anything that I'm missing?

2. What spells/abilities could you power a magitek society with? I'm willing to assume a reasonably large number of mid-level. Are there any "famous" threads on this subject? (This was a dumb, too broad question.)

2. (New) Is there any clever way to efficiently mine?

3. Is there anyway to conveniently give the party a bunch of "paranoia style" extra lives? In 3.5e, this could be done with something like contingency teleportation + raise dead and an industrial-scale diamond mining operation.

Any answers/threads I could be pointed to much appreciated. Any source material is ok! You can assume a mature gaming group which is sympathetic to the concept and to some distortions of 5e assumptions (e.g. a large than usual number of mid and high level NPCs.)

Thanks in advance for your time!

EDIT: I'm building a summary google doc with all of my findings which I will post in a bit for reference.

[LudicSavant]

There's so much Tippyverse-ish stuff in 5e that I don't even know where to begin listing it all. I guess I'll just pick a completely random one. Here's a guide to revolutionizing the world with Magic Mouth: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...es-Technique-)

[Empathy]

Amazing. Are there any clever keywords to google beyond "5e tippyverse giantitp" which would call some of this stuff up?