My Little Pony XCIX: Leakier Than A Changeling Bathtub!

[Schismatic]

From all their collective apperences, you know that "sustainable growth" and "not demolishing the environment" are not part of Flim and Flam's vocabulary. They are not interested in progress, they are only interested in making a quick buck. They would be, given a sliver of a chance, the ones who would be actually implementing the sort of things the compiuter game industry is getting its colelctive hand slapped over (predatory business practices, lootboxes).

They are NOT entrapenuers and models of ideal business people, nor of inventors, they are confidence tricksters, regardless of what talents they might have that they use to support their con-artistry. Could they be such if they were different people? Yes. And Jubilee could be a fracking monsterous killing machine if she was a different person, but that's not the case is it?

Flim and Flam aren't Richard Arkwright, though; they are closer to Dr. William Whitney Christmas, the guy that designed the Christmas Bullet, arguably the worst aircraft ever made, who did it basically to get the contract for the money based on nothing more than fancy and blagging (dude essentially smooth-talked his way into a profitable (for him) military commission without any actual credentials - he even told the engineers he kept all the plans in his head when they asked him for them to start working on it). With the exception being that Flim and Flam are marginally better in that they haven't essentially murdered two people yet.



Equestria is already industrialised, as we have seen both heavy construction gear and hydroelectic dams, a railway system, sewing machines, film projectors, airships, electric lights, fridges, flashlights... In fact a very great deal of stuff that would not be found out of place in, say, Murdoch Mysteries, set at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Heck, I point out to you that one has to go barely as far back as my parent's generation to when the milkman was still using a horse and cart, before TV and large chunks of Equestrian magic/technology level could easily pass off as into even the 50s in a lot of ways. And we know from Princess Spike that the population of Equestria could easily be well into the tens of millions and could be substantially higher.

I mean, they have a weather FACTORY; factories were not even a thing until the industrial revolution. (And I spent three frag-damn YEARS on the tedium that was the agricultural and industrial revolution, I know...)

Make no mistake, Equestria is not a medieval or faux-medieval fantasy society; despite the prevalence of magic at the fore, their technology is advanced; not to the digital era, yet, certainly, but WELL into the industrial, maybe last industrial peroid.



Those seven seconds of the Flim and Flam future show a sky choked with pollution, coming from numerous factories - note how the landscape is not vibrant, but washed-out and muddy? Yeah, this isn't a "yay progress" scene, this is the sort of ecological disaster a Captain Planet villain would love. Rampant industrialisation is not a good thing, as one only has to look at what humasn have managed to do to know that.

Equestria has a confusing array of differing technologies of different eras. Without actual electricity, not late-industrial. Dirigibles is kind of weird, Pinkie uses a gyrocopter, and yet no telegram. The three signposts of the late-modern and the inevitably recession of the industrial boom of the mid 19th.

Sure, as I said before--the writers decided stupid-evil with a hamfisted allegory to 'big business' all while neglecting the fact that clearly the FF brothers have a viable machine. The Apple family farm functions as practically a chartered company (the ability to consolidate commercial exclusive rights) which is already shady, but they can't even do their job. Flim and Flam couldn't sell cider to the town. Applejack literally lassos the barrel away even though clearly they can't even facilitate need that they have. So you have a family that has cornered trade and productive forces, can't meet demand, and refuses to allow competition that can.

And for what actual reason? The thing is you need an industrial revolution in order to diversify the economic base.

I mean the Industrial Revolution allowed the most fertile grounds for electricity grids and radio.

Moreover, rampant industrialization isn't exactly a problem in comparison to yearly food riots. We have the capacity to correct human damages to the planet assuming the political will is there. But a failure of politics is not necessarily a failure of human ingenuity or necessarily consumption on its own.

After all, the situation would be much worse if we simply got up to first and second generation coal powerplants and said; "About as much industry as we need." Imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for AC power supply? Only 38% of all civil powerplants run on coal. Imagine how awful the situation would be if we didn't make such astounding leaps in a relatively short amount of time?

What's the alternative, here?