That's an interesting take - although there was literally a global pandemic just a few years ago.

Granted, the nature of surviving that pandemic involved reinforcing several isolating habits on a societal scale.

I'm curious as to what situations would actually result in more fabric produced on a large scale.

Oh, the pandemic - that's a great counterpoint you bring up. And I like the distinction you make that the collective experience was quite strange: collective in the aggregate, but profoundly isolating in (individual) practice.

I wonder if the deeply isolated experience of covid actually feeds into and supports the original premise, in its own inverse way.