Your loom has committed an out of cheese error.
With thanks to Pterry and M$ corporation.
]]>That said, I think you answered the question of why not a spinneret loom quite nicely. Now let's sit back and watch some crazy grad student make a perfectly functional spinneret out of a spinning microvortex of polymer nanoparticles, some well-aimed lasers, and a mucus sprayer on the downstream end to congeal the hot mess into a spun fiber as it gets ejected.
]]>And am now imagining a system using something similar to Fabrican sprayed onto an automated dress form that adjusts to match a body scan, and sprays on clothing in what ever pattern and textures are programmed.
]]>I suspect the people in charge , if they think about such things which is highly unlikely probably figure they can handle the unrest with machines.
In not that many years it really wont be that difficult to rig up more advanced smart drones with various nasties and simply exterminate Dalek style unwanted people with some combination of those nasties and simply shutting off most food and essentials in urban areas.
Another less direct option would be to trade fertility for food, you have to be sterlized and submit to registration or even chipping to get aid.
There is also a more peaceful and I think (assuming civilization survives anyway) probable scenarios , gradual population decline.
Get the birth rate down to subreplacement and it never goes up. If the elite say have 2.1 kids and the proles 1.7 than the problem self corrects. In the end after a few hundred years, a small population of fabulously rich people are all that are left.
The real questions to my mind are
1 Will we have a Greer style catabloic collapse or maybe some kind of ecological collapase first. 2 Will social unrest do to economic decline reach some critical point before technology allows for supression. 3 Is it posible for new social movements to adjust things. I see some small trend to this 19th century stylewith the billionaire give away pledages and a greater emphasis on status through generosity as in some Norse and Native American cultures is a posisble evolutionIts not exactly as if the money addicts will suddenly start caring but many are intensely status conscious and if charity or just having staff imporves status they'll go for it
Also many are quite pragmatic being rich is easier and more possible when you have markets and a customer base. Its rather hard to even get to be wealthy when no one trusts anyone, no one can afford anything and 9/10 the human race is your enemy
]]>Mad Billionaire: "let's kill everyone and use robots to take their shit!"
Sane Billionaire: "hang on, if we do that, who's going to mow our lawns? (And anyway, genocide is naughty.)"
If we can engineer a signifier shift whereby being a humanitarian philanthropists becomes the way billionaires assert their status, then ... well, it couldn't be any worse than the current situation, could it?
The real problem is that billionaires (and their political proxies) are not, in fact, Evil Geniuses (or sane ones, for that matter). They're just confused ordinary folks yanking on levers they don't really understand. Some of them are confused old folks yanking on levers with no heed for the consequences 20 years down the line because they expect to be (a) dead or (b) the world to be running on the same rails they think it's always been on.
The biggest problem with the ideology of capitalism (that is, the drive to implement capitalism everywhere, as opposed to the theory of how capitalism works where it is implemented) is the disproportionate respect it inculcates for successful capitalists ... who in many cases either inherited their wealth or just got lucky once and made best use of their opportunity.
]]>Other than that, omigod. Hahahaha. Two in the bush, indeed.
]]>Well done though Charlie! I was greatly amused
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