Blank Reg Suggests

This morning, while having breakfast (waffles with vanilla ice cream; quite nice), I leafed through the two Sunday papers. I skipped through most of the lightweight sections, slowing down to read the finance and business sections, and then into the 'metro' pieces. I was glumly fascinated to find that two ongoing horror tales still exist.

First, the Transportation Security Administration still maintains a list of people who shouldn't be allowed to fly, or do so only with caution; many of these are not any sort of criminal (some are young children). While I appreciate their efforts in keeping squalling children off airplanes, I think their approach is on the baroque side. I am particularly impressed by their adherence to the rules of society as promulgated by George Orwell, including the maintenance of secret lists whose very existence is regarded as an open secret, and which has the flypaper-like characteristic that, once on it, you can never come off. Serious people have occasionally issued a document from the TSA itself, assuring all and sundry that the bearer is not the miscreant on the secret list, and should not be hindered; the document, when proffered, triggers amusement on the part of the TSA minions, who say that the document could not be real, because they don't give out documents like that, and even if they did, it's not to be trusted, because it could be and probably is a forgery -- and why are you carrying a possibly-forged TSA document, anyway? Into the little room with you.

Second, the concept of a 'credit score' is still as mysterious and open to varying styles of interpretation as ever before. If you have a credit card, do not carry a balance from month to month, and have a significant amount of unused credit, you might be all right -- though the mere possibility that you might decide to invoke that extra credit can be regarded as a credit risk. If, on the other hand, you have a credit card, do not carry a balance from month to month, and have used a significant amount of your credit, you may find that having done so marks you as a credit risk. Similarly, if you have a credit card, such as an American Express card, with no pre-defined credit limit, your 'limit' for credit scoring is assumed to be the most that you've ever used, unless they don't know what that is, in which case its not used at all for scoring. If you elect to opt out entirely, canceling all of your credit cards, then you don't have credit cards - which means you don't have consumer credit, which means you don't have consumer credit history, which means you can't get consumer credit, which means that you're untrustworthy. Into the little room with you.

Advice to the graduating class of 2009, from Blank Reg: Stay in one place, stay off the grid, and learn to barter.