This whole thing reminds me of an old serial that came on Saturday evenings about a successful 19th century snake oil salesman selling his business to a new buyer, Musty Ephron, and all of the past customers got really pissed because Ephron is an asshole with goofy viewpoints who then proceeds to charge a nominal fee for customers to get the "premium" label snake oil, which is really just the old snake oil in a new bottle with a blue label on it (and doesn't even really taste the way the old oil used to). Everyone gets mad and talks about how they're all going to die without their snake oil and that the community will crumble without access to the snake oil, but they are unwilling to pay extra for this bullshit new blue label when they used to get it for no additional fee.
The former customers start putting up posters all over town making fun of the new guy and also pinpointing exactly where he'll be later that day. Then ol' Musty gets mad at them and refuses to sell them any snake oil at all. Meanwhile, Musty's original business (selling modern conveyances with a new fangled contraption called the internal combustion engine) starts to suffer as his customer base, it turns out, was largely made up of forward thinking individuals who put a great deal of faith in all things modern. Things get even trickier when it turns out that Musty Ephron sold off a big chunk of his modern conveyance business to finance his purchase of the snake oil business, and now both entities are struggling.
In the next episode, we learn that Ephron's other futuristic endeavor (long distance train travel) may be in jeopardy as Chester A. Arthur himself has been refused the sale of snake oil, which he dearly loves, and has decided that the government will not bankroll this new business for Ephron like it has already bankrolled the modern conveyance and long distance travel businesses. Meanwhile, thousands of former snake oil users begin to realize that life without snake oil is exactly like life was with snake oil, and further realize that the vast majority (over 90%) of people never tried even a sip of snake oil in the first place (even though the customers were certain that everyone was doing it) and their neighbors and friends rejoice as they rejoin society at large and recognize that they were hiding inside of a bottle of inconsequential nonsense.
I don't remember exactly how it ends, but I think after having been exposed as a fraud with no actual business sense beyond taking advantage of poorly conceived government programs, Musty Ephron ends up moving to an island with a bunch of illegitimate offspring and performing weird experiments involving human/animal hybrids. He also starts wearing a fun hat. The former snake oil customers discover a new product called cocaine, being peddled by some oddly muscled up bald guy named Buzzleby Geoffs, and realize that they were sorely mistaken about how awesome snake oil was, as this new stuff has a real kick to it. Geoffs buys all of Ephron's old businesses for four or five old greenbacks (that were technically not even legal tender anymore). After an evening of sampling his own product, he invents space exploration, packs up all the assets of Ephron's old businesses, and launches them straight into the moon on a giant penis.