There is a lot more to Urinetown than its politics and everyone should see it for its success on many levels. Its also not difficult to make a case for the necessity of middle class repression as I have somewhat done before here and here. But Urinetown's explanation is much more fun.
Without strong, literally strong as the character is named Bobby Strong, leadership the poor in Urinetown will resort to violence and pee everywhere. Without strong leadership they are at the mercy of greedy capitalists or politicians that will tell them whatever they want to hear. The cycle of alternating austerity and mass consumption continues until some resource, in this case water, is used up and order and sustainability must be restored.
Even the morally incorruptible Bobby Strong cannot in good faith ask the poor to sacrifice consumption today for a possible reward tomorrow. Thoreau's "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us." Rescinding oligarchy or even just old money means no more castles and cathedrals of Europe, Great Wall of China, universities etc. as well as accelerating mass consumption beyond what resources can bare. But how true is that and how much of the need for middle class suppression is enforced by upper class driven policies?
In the sixth grade textbook, Focus on Earth Science, there is a single page towards the end of the almost 400 page book for each of the topics of electric cars and global warming. The index has no entry for sustainability nor, though this book is taught in a state suffering from drought, any mention of water shortage.
And so we come to the upper classes problem with science being taught or, to a great degree, even researched. Unfortunately for a self justified oligarchy science has a loop hole for the necessity of an aristocracy pushing long term labor intensive projects on the unwilling masses
No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so.
and for requiring an aristocracy enforced austerity of all resources. So the advances and prediction power of science must be
down played
Even as late as 2001, the Fox television network broadcast Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? which claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race.
Weather Channel Co-Founder Tells Fox News Host Global Warming Is A Myth
The rightful place of an educated upper class to make all the decisions for the poor must be preserved even though the upper class are no longer as educated as the middle class and, arguably, now are the more conflicted party when it comes to progress, as it is their wealth that science needs and not the poor's raw labor.
Perhaps the last possible requirement for an aristocratic intervention would be the size of humanity. Without austerity of every element required for successful parenting, education, free time, full employment, birth control, clean environment, healthy food, would the masses be able to regulate the population of the Earth themselves?
Fortunately our world is a bit less black and white than Urinetown and we just may find out
The founder and former CEO of Microsoft, probably the richest "nerd" on the planet, is becoming quite the good-sex philanthropist. Last month, the Gates Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant to the University of Wollongong in Australia to create a condom that allows for more sensation -- and that's only one of 11 different condom projects the foundation backed.
The technology behind the implant was originally created in the 1990s by MIT researchers Robert Langer and Michael Cima and PhD student John Santini, who later licensed it out to MicroCHIPS.
But the idea for the device apparently came from Bill Gates himself. When Gates visited Langer’s MIT lab, he asked whether it would be possible to develop a birth control method that could be used for many years and turned on and off at will, according to MIT Technology Review. Langer pointed Gates toward MicroCHIPS.