Grid? What Grid?

A few weeks ago I read (don’t remember where exactly, alas) that before World War I, one could expect to go through life hardly noticing or being noticed by one’s government. Aside from an occasional interaction with the police and perhaps a weekly trip to the post office, assuming times of peace, one could live an entire lifetime completely about one’s own business.

Things changed about a century ago.

The New Deal and the Great Society came (and went) and we have the mammoth leviathan known as Federal, State, County, and Local government to contend with. Whether we like it or not.

Nowadays, a few days after birth a child’s parents are mandated to apply for a social security number for the newborn. Up until the Eighties, I believe, you didn’t have to get a number until you were fourteen or fifteen, as it was only needed for employment purposes. Now, no more. You are effectively registered with the government within the first thirty days of your earthly sojourn.

There’s taxation – I’m taxed to within an inch of my economic life! Taxes on my pay stub, taxes on my mortgage bill, taxes on just about every single purchase I make. There’s regulation – millions and millions of pages of them, from what I’ve read, covering all facets of our lives. For me, I see it as the 401k administrator (and participant) at work as well as my company’s medical and dental benefits. I also see it every time I tear open an envelope containing a credit card bill, a way-too-frequent occurence at the Hopper household.

We have social security cards, birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, six points of ID, photo IDs, bank statements, debit cards, credit cards, medical cards, dental cards – there’s no room in my wallet for cash anymore! And each and every one flows all the way back to some government agency which are all connected, labyrinthinic, to a central government database. (At least, in theory).

Thank God for built-in organizational inefficiency, at least within democratic republic government institutions.

Makes me pine for days I’ve only vicariously experienced, days I enjoy reading about in the Westerns and Victorian adventure novels I’ve read, where the hero – untouched and unmolested by any nameless bureaucracy – opens up his front door, nods to the postman and maybe a passing officer of the peace, sets off and molds the world to his own and only his own will.