![]() Suppose this blockade goes on for days or weeks and other blockades spring up. But if real economic damage results – as with the steel strike in 1952 and the air traffic controllers in 1981 – the sit uation could become violent. Given the soaring inflation and other economic issues facing America and reflected in a volatile and unpredictable stock market that appears particularly out of control, this trucker disruption is no longer a protest. It could have profound legal and economic implications if it persists. Take supply chains and just-in-time specifications to maximize efficiency and cut costs.Ī ship grounds in the Suez Canal for 10 days, and massive global interruptions break out. A plant manufacturing computer chips experiences a slow down due to COVID-19 cases and auto production lines shut down. A pipeline carrying gasoline that supplies most of northeast America is hacked and motorists are unable to fill up their cars.Ībout one quarter of U.S.-Canadian trade flows over the 1.6-mile-long Ambassador Bridge, or just under half-a-billion dollars a day. Already Ford and Toyota automobile makers are cutting back for lack of parts. For every advance driven by technology, the diffusion of power and globalization, new vulnerabilities, weaknesses, dependencies and interdependencies were created. Sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, marches and other disruptive tactics to seek political change are as old as civilization.īut today’s disruptions are tectonically different. The reasons are the subject of my new book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Have Become the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.”Ī curious thing happened to society as it grew more advanced and modern in terms of the sophistication and extraordinary improvements of standards of living for most citizens. are MAD. No, not mad as in insane or angry instead, they are the new MAD, which stands for “massive attacks of disruption.” Food and water lines would be set up so people are essentially forced to go to the government for what they need.The several hundred Canadian truckers blocking the roads and bridges crossing into Detroit and other parts of Michigan and the U.S. And by taking away your food and water, the government would make you completely dependent on them. These are just a few of the things that can happen during martial law.īut why would the government do this? Well, by confiscating all the guns and ammunition, they would have complete control because they would have all the guns. ![]() ![]() Checkpoints would be set up throughout the city, and arrests without legal justification will be common. They may even go to door to door and confiscate your food, water, firearms, ammunition, and other supplies. The government would take control of the press and the media so you would only hear what the government wants you to hear. Your right to free speech and to keep and bear arms, for example, would go out the window. Martial law means your constitutional rights will be suspended. It happened after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005, and there are many other disasters that could lead to martial law. It means, in a nutshell, that the government takes complete control… of literally everything. It’s essentially the opposite of the absence of government and anarchy. Martial law is another very real possibility after a disaster strikes. “By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.” Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. “Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. Want to save this post for later? Click Here to Pin It On Pinterest! I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. “As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. In his book, The Blank Slate, he describes what happened: This riot is why Steven Pinker, the popular science author, gave up on the philosophy of anarchism.
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