It doesn't have to be that way, you can only push people so far before they riot. History has thousands of instances and many have been very ugly, 1789 and 1917 for instance.
The rioting in Washington a while back had little to do with people not being able to make ends meet. Many civil wars (including the US Civil War) came about for other reasons.
US Civil War was a civil war in name only. For all practical purposes, it was an interstate conflict.
And yes, riots can be caused by other things too - e.g. religious riots. But whatever it is, people have to care a lot about it, enough so to be willing to put their own life and limb on the line. This is not one of those cases.
To be frank, I don't think the general public cares enough. And the other side is always ready to use children safety, foreign hackers and scam prevention as an argument. Nobody will riot over tech people losing the ability to run their own machines with their own software. It already happened to printers and, most importantly, phones. When 95% of normal activities happen on mobile devices anyway, they will come for computers. They'll run a campaign, they'll lobby politics, cartel chip vendors and start introducing small changes in hardware and OS that will make it always a bit more inconvenient running your own software. Until there's nothing left to defend, and the industry will move on.
