Basically the title.
I have seen the EU-OS/Suse discussions for some months now. However, Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora are extremely mature projects. So competing against them will be hard.
I want to know how realistic the scenario (described by the question) is.
He’s losing men over 50 years old that are left out and are garbage of society. They wouldn’t be participating in any demographic activities anyway.
I bet there are millions of Americans like this too. Coal miners who lost the job, casino players, heavy drinkers. For a hefty sum of money and a chance to be important again they’d do anything. You really underestimate how quick they can be turned into a cannon fodder and how little the society will miss them.
Source: I lived in Russia.