Futures and Options

I join Zenmervolt in applauding the Ninth Circuit’s decision to incorporate the Second Amendment. I’m not a huge fan of the selective incorporation doctrine (it’s another one of those mushy multi-factor made-up balancing tests), but the reality is it’s here to stay, and any court applying the doctrine honestly would have to come to the same conclusion the Ninth Circuit did yesterday.

I write separately to note that although the plaintiffs challenging the county’s gun ban won on the incorporation issue, they actually lost the overall case. The Court found that the ban on possession on county lands fell within the “sensitive places” exception to the Second Amendment right highlighted by the Heller opinion. The Court didn’t go into much detail in explaining why all “county lands” are considered “sensitive places” for purposes of the Second Amendment; certainly there would be a more compelling justification for the ban in some particular venues than in others. This sort of question highlights the relative novelty of Second Amendment litigation. Unlike, say, the First or Fourth Amendments (but not the Third Amendment), which are backed up by reams of caselaw analyzing how those rights apply in particular circumstances, the precise scope of the Second Amendment right is yet to be delineated. Once the incorporation hurdle has been passed (and I have little doubt that most of the other Circuits, and eventually the Supreme Court, will follow the Ninth’s lead), the rubber will really meet the road, and Courts will get down to the gritty business of figuring out what is and isn’t a permissible limitation of the right to bear arms. Stay tuned.

And for a more expert analysis of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, and links to other relevant sources, see Eugene Volokh’s post here.

This is a Very Good Thing.

We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited.¹⁷ We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments.¹⁸

Perhaps even more telling, however, is the footnote cited at the end of that landmark finding (bold is my own):

¹⁸The County and its amici point out that, however universal its earlier support, the right to keep and bear arms has now become controversial. See generally Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989). But we do not measure the protection the Constitution affords a right by the values of our own times. If contemporary desuetude sufficed to read rights out of the Constitution, then there would be little benefit to a written statement of them. Some may disagree with the decision of the Founders to enshrine a given right in the Constitution. If so, then the people can amend the document. But such amendments are not for the courts to ordain.

This seems to be a significant blow to the concept of judicial activism, especially coming from the 9th Circuit which has a history of interpretive rulings.

This is a victory.  It isn’t the victory, but it’s a solid win.  Thanks to Cato for bringing this to my attention.

I came across something interesting today at the Cato @ Liberty blog.  The relevant part is below:

Ever cross your mind that there’s a reason government programs increase over time? I’ll clue you in: Programs increase because of public demand.

It’s not rocket science, people want more services. Period. Somebody’s got to pay for them. Hences taxes. Or perhaps borrowing. Or a combination of both. In any event, there’s no evidence people are willing to get along with fewer services.

The situation seems simple to me; so why can’t you ideologues on the far right understand what’s going on. Instead, you simply go on bemoaning the existence of programs and taxes you don’t like.

Actually, we do see what’s going on.  Saying that programs increase because of public demand is a bit like saying that sunshine increases because of a lack of clouds.  It’s blatantly obvious.  Unlike the far left ideologues, however, conservatives realize that just because the public demands something doesn’t make that something a good idea.  A child may “demand” a chocolate bar in lieu of a nutritious dinner, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to substitute a proper meal with candy.  The idea that whatever we want is inherently good is poisonous to long-term sustainability.  it prioritizes short-term planning over the long term and immediate impulse over sober judgment.

Also, with government services the demand is often overstated because the “somebody” who pays is seldom the same “somebody” who benefits; at the very least even when the people who benefit also pay into the pot, they are putting in less than they are taking out.  Social Security is an excellent example.  Individuals are, on average, withdrawing far more than they have contributed to the system.  It continues to receive support, however, because everyone expects that they too will be able to take more out than they have put in.  If everyone had to pay for governmentally-administered services in proportion to how they use those services, there would not be nearly as much demand.

It’s a very simple matter:  If you promise to provide a service for free or for well below cost, there will always be demand for it.  If you continually provide services for free or below cost, however, you must recoup those expenses somehow and simply borrowing or taxing “the rich” is not sustainable because both sources of income will eventually run dry.  Whether people are “willing to get along with fewer services” or not is irrelevant.  At some point, they will have no choice at all because it will simply not be possible to continue providing services.  And that will be a disaster because people will have made long-term plans based on the assumption of those services being available.

In the end, it comes down to the necessity of operating within a budget.  An occasional deficit is allowable, but the Bush deficits were not, nor are the (far, far larger) Obama deficits.  Yes, balancing the budget will hurt.  Sometimes reality hurts, that’s just the way things are.

First of all, no, they aren’t dead.  They’ll be showing up again somewhere I’m sure.  In business a “post-mortem” is an analysis that occurs after a project has been completed and rolled-out; an investigation of what went right, and what went wrong.

So, what went right:

• A grass-roots effort started by a schoolteacher in Seattle was able to draw in a sizable amount of protesters in over 800 cities in the US; something that has historically been difficult at best for Conservatives.  We’ve proven that the conservative base can, in fact, be motivated.  And, unlike the protests against AIG executives, the Tea Parties actually drew more protesters than reporters.
• The protests were peaceful.  I saw no reports of vandalism or arrests and we didn’t have idiots laying down in the streets and no business was disrupted.  This is a clear differentiation from the majority of liberal protests I have seen in the news.

And, of course, what went wrong:

• Poorly chosen date.  By choosing to hold these protests on “tax day” the message was muddled.  While “tax day” is a high-profile day and appears to be a reasonable choice, the fact is that the protests were not anti-tax and the choice of day allowed confusion over that fact.
• The message was allowed to get lost in the noise.  The point of the protests was to come out against excessive governmental spending, especially the ridiculous amounts of pork-barrel spending that were slipped through under the guise of the “Stimulus” bill.  Many media reports, however, referred to the Tea Party participants as “Tax Protesters”.
• Allowing the opposition to frame the message.  Ridiculous and unfounded claims of astroturfing went largely un-refuted and the media were able to frame the event as a protest against taxation when the fact of the matter is that taxation is only a peripheral issue.  Yes, most (all?) of the participants in these protests feel that taxes are too high, but they view that as a symptom, not the disease.  The core of the protests was excessive governmental spending (something that, as I pointed out yesterday, most people seem to agree is bad), not the tax rates in and of themselves.  This message was not clearly communicated and the choice of tax day for the protests only further inhibited the ability to make this fact clear.

Overall, I am inclined to consider these events a qualified success.  The Tea Parties accomplished something that has not been managed in a long time; they gathered significant numbers of conservatives together through grass-roots efforts in over 800 locations across America.  For a group that historically does not show up to protest anything, that’s huge.  The lack of vandalism or disruption of business is also huge.  We’ve shown that conservatives are not like the idiots who lay down in the middle of the street to stop traffic or chain themselves to buildings.  We’ve proven that conservatives are committed to peaceable assembly which is a stark contrast to many other protest movements that advocate disruption and confrontation.

Still, there remains much to do.  As Repurblican pointed out a few days ago, the message needs to crystallize and be disseminated more clearly.  The focus needs to come out clearly and with strong emphasis.  Counter-claims need to be repudiated forcefully and immediately and this, as yet, has not been accomplished.  Without a strong center, this movement will get hijacked and it will peter out.  We’ve reached the point where it truly becomes do or die.  From here on out we need to repudiate the kooky hangers-on, clarify the message, and keep moving; if yesterday’s protests become an end rather than a single step, all effort towards these Porkulus protests will have been for naught.

Despite the implications in my (hopefully) humerous previous posting, I do intend to revisit the Tea Party phenomenon later today after I have had a chance to digest the news reports and the firsthand accounts of the participants (including the teaparty founder, Keli Carender).  I’m open to revising my opinions and, frankly, I hope that I am able to do so.  The less kooky the Tea Parties come off, the better we all are and, honestly, I don’t believe that the guy in the Little Green Footballs post is who Keli had in mind when she started this whole thing.

I was reminded again today of H. L. Mencken’s famous quote that, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”  Today’s trigger is a piece, purportedly from a letter to the editor, but which has been making the rounds on the Internet for at least a month now.  The idea is ambitiously called “Patriotic Retirement” and the “letter” runs as follows:

There’s about 40 million people over 50 years old……. in the work force – pay them $1 million apiece severance with the following stipulations.

1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings – UNEMPLOYMENT FIXED

2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered – AUTO INDUSTRY FIXED.

3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – HOUSING CRISIS FIXED.

Let’s take a look at this more critically, shall we?  The US life expectancy is 78 years (on average, for men it’s 75 years, for women, it’s 81 years, but for simplicity, let’s use the average).

If someone is 50 years old and receives the $1,000,000 to retire, that amounts to $35,714.28 per year until that person’s death.  Assuming they die at 78.  If they live longer, it’s less per year.  So they’re probably going to be looking for another job eventually anyway because, unless all of these people live in areas with ridiculously low costs of living, that $35,714.28 per year just doesn’t go very far.  If someone is 60 years old, then it becomes more reasonable at $55,555.55 per year.  Of course, this is all assuming that this is tax-free income.  If it is taxable, lop at least 40% off of those numbers so that Uncle Sugar can have his cut.

Requiring the purchase of a new American car (neglecting the fact that many “Japanese” cars are built in America and many “American” cars are built in Canada or Mexico), would mean that the person would sacrifice about a year’s worth of his or her payout in order to buy the car.  Or they would buy a small car (on which auto makers see very little profit) and promptly sell it, creating a glut of nearly-new used cars that would serve only to depress the automotive market further after the initial, artificial, spike in sales.  More important, however, is that this addresses a symptom and not the disease.

Simply increasing demand through a government mandate will not provide an incentive for increased quality or new ideas, which again serves only to harm automotive companies in the long run.  The situation we currently have exists because US automotive firms have been slower to react to changes in the marketplace than foreign firms have been and simply forcing people to buy the current products will not drive the innovation that US auto makers truly need to see.  In fact, their current state of desperation is, interestingly, the most likely means to ensure that their products will actually improve and become competitive once again.  Look at Ford, for example.  Ford was in a desperate place a few years ago and made the very bold move of ousting William Clay Ford from the position of CEO and bringing in Alan Mulally.  Under Mulally’s leadership, Ford has begun a rather impressive turnaround.  Not only are they the only US auto maker to decline federal bailout money, but they are also producing a hybrid that bests Toyota’s comparable offering (the new Fusion hybrid that offers superior mileage to Toyota’s Camry hybrid, and, I speak from experience with both cars, offers a superior driving experience).  Desperation breeds innovation.

Buying a new house or paying off a mortgage represents the potential sacrifice of 3 or more years worth of the payout in most scenarios and once again ignores the underlying causes.  First of all, people who are 50 or older are unlikely to be upside down in their mortgages.  These are not, by and large, the people who are at risk of losing their homes and they are not, by and large, people whose mortgages represent a high risk to the banks.  Sure, there will be some people here who fit both those categories, but not in significant numbers.  The 50+ and employed demographic is not where most of the risk lies.  Because of this, a stipulation requiring that these people either pay off their mortgage or buy a new house (presumably outright rather than with a loan) would not have any significant affect on the amount of toxic assets carried by banks.  Additionally, many people in this age group already have their homes paid off, so forcing them to buy a new house is also going to force them to sell a house as well (most likely they would buy a house and then sell it again immediately given the hassles involved with moving and also with renting), which means no real progress is made as houses would remain on the market, just now with different owners.

And, lest you think I’m letting something slip, there’s the small problem of the math.  $1 million multiplied by 40 million people is $40,000,000,000,000.  $40 Trillion.  That’s significantly more money than we’re spending on large companies.  More expensive, less effective.  Everyone loses.

At first blush, the proposition seems good.  But upon actual critical analysis it falls apart, fast.  It’s a “feel-good” solution that is actually no solution at all and it represents our collective (and unfortunate) desire for simple “quick-fix” remedies that don’t require us to think about complex issues.  Reality doesn’t work that way.  The problems we are facing today are complex, and the solutions will also be complex.  We’re going to have to actually think to get ourselves out of this one.  I know that’s frightening to many people, but it’s unavoidable.

Well, Michael Lind, I’ll say this for you, you’ve started me thinking.  Much like a blind pig, you seem to have stumbled across a truffle in spite of yourself.  Sort of, anyway.

The question you ask, how would Lincoln vote today, is a good one, even if you slant the answers by comparing dissimilar data or through the use of a strawman in lieu of actual Republican positions.  Let’s have a look at your points from a more objective lens, shall we?

Race:  Obviously Lincoln was, first and foremost, a man of the mid-1800s.  Allowing for the inherent prejudices of his era, it seems clear to me that Lincoln was entirely against any sort of racial discrimination. It also seems quite clear that he was not against using federal power to mandate the recognition of civil rights.  In this case, it seems that both current parties would have an equal claim to Lincoln.  Despite the vocal states’ rights contingent within conservatism, this view is far from a majority and, what is more, even affirmed states’ rights supporters acknowledge that there are areas where federal power is necessary to ensure the cohesiveness of the country’s laws.  A person would be hard pressed to demonstrate that any significant number of conservatives would support the idea of civil rights being a states’ rights issue.

Immigration:  Again, both parties have a claim on Mr. Lincoln in this area.  Republicans may actually have the stronger claim.  Bear with me on this one.  In the real world, outside of the strawman created by many liberals, conservatives are emphatically not “anti-immigration”.  What conservatives are is anti-illegal-immigration.  Anyone who wants to come to this country should be allowed access to legal channels.  Race, gender, religion, nationality, etc should never be relevant to the immigration process.  I find it difficult to believe that a man like Mr. Lincoln would have supported amnesty for those who have broken the law, and because of this, I have difficulty thinking that Mr. Lincoln would be on the liberal side of this issue.

Economics:  Mr. Lind bases his claims on Lincoln’s statement that, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.”  True enough.  But let us look at the differences between Lincoln’s time and our own.  Yes, Lincoln supported a central bank (in his time the term “national bank” was used interchangeably with what is today called a “central bank”, i.e. in the US, the Federal Reserve), but so do almost all conservatives.  The argument over whether a central bank should exist is settled (a central bank is necessary if only for the maintenance of a standard currency); what is debated today is just how much power such a central bank should have.  Lincoln gives us little to go on if we wish to divine his opinion on that matter.  Yes, Lincoln was in favor of the internal improvements system.  But again, look at the time period in which Lincoln was speaking.  The country was actively expanding at that time; new states were being added rapidly and federal programs were needed to fuel the expansion.  This is not a situation which is analogous to the present.  So far, two of the three positions give us little, if any, information to suggest that Mr. Lincoln would prefer or avoid either party.  Finally, a high protective tariff.  This is definitely not going to sway Mr. Lincoln towards the globalism of the Democratic party, nor would it even find Mr. Lincoln a home among the more centrist Republicans.  No, this view puts Lincoln firmly in the libertarian camp, rubbing elbows with Ron Paul rather than any centrist politician.

National Debt:  Again, Mr. Lind is disingenuous.  First, he uses the growth of the federal budget (indeed, quite staggering) during the Civil War to “prove” that Lincoln supported massive debt.  There are several things wrong with this, not the least of which being that Mr. Lind fails to provide anything beyond anecdotal evidence of an increase in debt to go along with the increased budget.  The primary objection to this portion of Lind’s diatribe is, of course, that Mr. Lincoln was embroiled in a war that he did not start and that he had choice to avoid.  Whether Mr. Lincoln supported high national debt or not, the war must be fought.  There’s no evidence whatsoever given to support the idea that Lincoln would have been in favor of voluntary, discretionary increases in the national debt.  It is one thing to increase debt in the face of an immediate existential threat to the Union, but it is quite another to choose to increase debt when such actions are unnecessary.  Mr. Lind, apparently, fails to grasp this distinction.  We would need to ask Lincoln himself how he felt about today’s situation, and that option is not exactly available.

Taxes:  Lincoln signed the bill creating the IRS into law as well as the bill that established the first income tax, true.  But this is hardly indicative that Lincoln would have supported the current level of taxation or government spending.  Nor is Mr. Lind’s knee-jerk characterization of Republicans as, “calling for more tax cuts as the answer to every problem” anything but a ridiculous strawman argument.  As a polemic, Mr. Lind’s assertions here are entertaining.  As anything resembling objective analysis, they are severely lacking.  Once again, the best we can say is that Lincoln’s modern position is unclear.

Religion:  Mr. Lind hits home on this point.  Not coincidentally, this is also the point on which Mr. Lind expends the greatest amount of energy in providing sources and quotations.  Scholarship does have value after all.  Unfortunately, the section is marred by the only-technically-not-absent acknowledgment that the religious right is not the entirety of the Republican party.  It seems that Mr. Lind is unhappy to admit that there may be conservatives out there who are neither scientifically backward nor religiously intolerant.  (Though, this is perhaps to be expected of someone who, in another article, claimed that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” was, “a weaselly term used by Christian nationalists to avoid offending Jews”.  Surely a statement like that must offend any serious academic student of religious history.)  And again, this doesn’t necessarily place Mr. Lincoln outside of conservatism as a whole.  Indeed, again it seems more likely to place Mr. Lincoln on the fringes, rubbing elbows with libertarians.

In the end, the blind pig does find his truffle; today’s Republican Party is clearly not aligned with Lincoln’s positions on the issues.  And Mr. Lind does admit that the Democrats are not exactly in a position to claim that they are carrying Lincoln’s torch either, so there is at least a hat-tip towards objectivity.  Still, Mr. Lind is clearly intent on axe-grinding, and it shows.  His articles are frequently ambitious, but unfortunately his own lack of academic rigor lets them down.  It would be nice, I think, if Mr. Lind’s articles were revisited by someone who is actually as intelligent as Michael Lind thinks himself to be.

A libertarian-minded friend recently brought up the idea of “going John Galt”: packing it all up and withdrawing his productive talents from American society as a protest against the absurd frenzy of government regulation and bailouts sparked by the economic downturn–in effect, going on strike. Turns out he’s not the only one to entertain this notion.
Yet, as much as I agree with their intentions, I wonder if these protesters have misnamed their campaign against big government, and if they should really be looking to John Galt as a model of rebelliousness.

Their defiance is nominally styled on the exploits of the hero of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Galt is the brilliant inventor who vows to “stop the motor of the world” by convincing all the men of great productive ability–the men of the mind–to join his strike. Galt’s goal is the utter destruction of the moral-political edifice of modern America–the elimination of the notion that man is his brother’s keeper. In the novel, it works. Industry and commerce crumble, and the rule of law soon gives way to anarchy.

I once described the novel to my mom, who hadn’t read it. “Sounds like a terrorist,” she said. Her remark gave me pause: she was condemning the hero of one my all-time favorite literary works, yet she sort of had a point. Galt and his comrades are able to stand by, secure in their mountain hideaway, and watch the self-ruination of the world below, exactly as they meant it to happen. Is that not the same sort of moral arrogance–the unflinching belief that one’s vision of the world is correct, and the acceptance of human suffering as a necessary means to achieve that vision in its purest form–that allows men to fly commercial airplanes into crowded skyscrapers? Well, no and yes.

No, because Galt is very careful in choosing his method of rebellion. He doesn’t do anything, which is the entire point. He doesn’t take anyone’s life; he forces everyone to live his life on his own, without mooching off the efforts of others. He lays bare the reality that the bulk of society rests on the productive ability of a determined few. Those that cannot make it on their own, perish (see Zenmervolt’s post on shooting horses).

So yes, the means are different–omission versus commission–yet the end goal of Galt and real-world fanatical jihadists is identical: the destruction of Western civilization. Galt does not flinch at this outcome; he simply sees no alternative. He perceives the moral underpinnings of society to be rotten to the core, and a great and violent cleansing is the only way to wipe the slate clean. This is one of several ways in which I believe Rand’s writing departs from reality (although I don’t think her artistic goal is an accurate portrayal of reality, which is one of the reasons Atlas Shrugged is such an elegantly powerful philosophical statement). Decent men, even if they buy into Galt’s individualist philosophy wholeheartedly, are incapable of watching the suffering of fellow men with heroic detachment. Humans simply aren’t programmed that way. And that’s one of the reasons that “going John Galt” is a poor name for modern-day protests. I doubt that most of the real-world strikers have the goal of destroying Western civilization as they know it. They simply lack the desire to participate in the system any longer.

And even if ruin and anarchy were their goal, achieving it by going on strike from society would be unlikely to achieve it. It’s too easy for humans to survive in this world. Our historic inventiveness has made life incredibly easy, and we are never required to acknowledge the root means of our existence. Thus, I simply cannot foresee the world falling to pieces as it did in the novel, even if a significant percentage of the world’s productive citizens “went John Galt.” People will go on happily, comfortably, unthinkingly for a long while, maintaining the moral-political status quo.

What “going John Galt” amounts to in the real world is an act of political expression. And in that vein, it may have some impact. Personally, I still think the world is a pretty good place, with lots of people worth dealing with, and I am not ready to withdraw myself, even if I had the means and wherewithal to do so. So my own acts of political expression will be writing blog posts, voting, etc. I am still hopeful that we can change the status quo from within. Rand’s novel is a tremendous artistic statement about a powerful philosophy; it is not, and does not strive to be, an accurate portrayal of the real world. Its worth as a guide to real-world action is dubious, but its worth as a guide to philosophy is indisputable, and those who live in the real world would do well to read and understand it.

“Pumpkin, that’s modern medicine. Advances that keep people alive who should have died a long time ago, back when they lost what made them people.” – Dr. Percival “Perry” Cox in the very first episode of “Scrubs”

Between yesterday’s article about the reduced health care costs of smokers and the near-continuous stream of news pieces about the economy I’ve started to think that maybe there’s some common ground between the two.  Not in any causal or correlative way, but in overall philosophy.  Modern medicine has given us many great things; it has eradicated diseases like polio and has all but eliminated diseases like tuberculosis.  On the other hand, it creates situations where people can linger for years, sometimes decades, connected to “life” support machinery but unconscious and otherwise devoid of everything that makes us truly “human” and “alive”.  It seems to me that we’re now extending this same practice to corporations.

Dolling out government funds to corporations just to keep them afloat makes them artificially viable.  Remove the infusions of government cash and the companies go into bankruptcy and are forced to re-organize, at which point they may either return to the marketplace as revitalized entities or they may fail entirely, but they do so on their own inherent viability not from a continuous infusion of taxpayers’ dollars.  There comes a time when we either pull the plug or waste time, effort, and money in a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable.

Those who support bailouts may point to the Chrysler example of the early 1980′s.  They may say that Chrysler’s government loans allowed the company to claw its way back and revitalize itself; that the 1980′s were a fantastic time for Chrysler’s profitability.  They would be wrong. The government gave Chrysler no money at all back in 1979; they merely co-signed Chrysler’s loan applications.  Taxpayer dollars, while at risk, were not actually spent.  Also, that co-signing came with strings attached.  Chrysler of 1979 went bankrupt in every real way save actually calling it Chapter 11.  In every functional aspect, it was a bankruptcy.  Chrysler’s creditors were forced to settle for 30 cents on the dollar or were paid off in shares of stock that were effectively worthless except as toilet paper.  Chrysler’s workers were forced to accept pay reductions and over 40% of the hourly workers were laid off.  Chrysler went through a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in everything except the name.

If anything, Chrysler’s previous “bailout” in 1979 is proof that the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy process works.  It’s time to take the “patients” off of life support and let them live or die on their own merits.

More comforting news about the world today from the Wall Street Journal.  It seems that not only have software gurus managed to break into the network that controls our power grid (and other utilities), but they’ve also implanted programs that would give them control at a later date.

And some people wonder why I think it’s a good idea to have a well, a septic tank, propane heat, and a generator.

*_{I don’t think that utilities are evil or that being “on the grid” somehow lets the government track you or anything like that.  Those are ridiculous notions.  But I have always thought that it is a good idea to be prepared to be reasonably independent if at all possible.  It’s just a good way to reduce the potential for minor inconveniences.}