Requirements: Mac computer with an Intel processor - 1GB of RAM - DVD drive for installation - 5GB of available disk space....
Your Porche analogy doesn't hold water. Porche doesn't require that you agree to a license to purchase their engine, Apple does. If you do not abide by that license, Apple can and should take all steps to prevent you from using their software in a manner contrary to their license. You may not like the concept of licensing software, but that is the reality in todays intellectual property world. Also, Apple has done nothing the version of OS X currently installed on your Atom rig. Preventing you from upgrading to their next version is not the same thing as "somehow change the engine AFTER purchase." And keep in mind, you didn't purchase the software, you purchased a license for the use of their software.... and if you attempt to break the license, you use of that license is no longer valid.
As the world continues to make scientific progress (albiet more slowly than theoretically possible, but that is acceptable), it will slowly become increasingly difficult for the unintelligent and uneducated to survive.
All things and people being equal, your point might actually be true. However, with the way that western societies have been doing anything and everything to ensure the survival of the weakest, laziest, most unfit of it's citizens at the expense of the rest of the population, I doubt your premise will come true while those states continue on their march towards socialist, nanny state policies. While social welfare programs tend to give folks a big warm and fuzzy, in the long run, it squeezes any incentive for trying to get ahead in life out of all but the most motivated of individuals. While it is definitely admirable that some individuals will continue to excel regardless of the social structure they find themselves in, this policy will eventually lead to downfall of western civilization as it takes more than just a few girders to hold up an entire bridge.
All in all, I think we would all benefit because the networks would know which shows no one cares about and could adjust their programming quicker and the advertisers would have a better idea of how to reach their target demographic and how much they should be paying to do so.
Easy peasy.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
The government of Iran does what it chooses because the the people that live there allow it.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra