Friday, February 29, 2008

looting

Another bold prediction...
It seems to me that there could be some unintended consequences of all this capitalistic consumerism and the recent advent of acquiring instantaneuos information. Try to follow me here. You have all these retail outlets which increasingly stock small and expensive items. Specifically stuff like laptops, video gaming devices, medication, etc. Wouldn't it be possible to sign up (via the interent) for some kind of notification, sent by whoever, that there will be a mass looting spree at this particular store or general location. I'm talking about smash and grab - nothing too fancy. Basically, you'd be notified via your cell phone that a mob will quickly appear at a certain location. In increasingly difficult economic times, there are a lot of people out there who'd have no qualms about committing acts of blatant theft against big corporations if they know they could get away with it. You might ask, what about the law enforcement or security cameras. That probably wouldn't be a factor if the place gets torched immediately following the instant looting/wilding spree.
I'm just mentioning this because I see a certain inevitablity here. You can't just have all these retail outlets keep popping up without a negative backlash. There's got to be some form of checks and balances with this.