The Equifax Debacle

The American people have been told, yes, Equifax had all your permanent, private, personal data: your Social Security number, birthdate, et cetera. No, you are not allowed to ever change this data. Yes, anyone can apply for a new credit card with that data, thus placing your credit history, privacy and even freedom in jeopardy. Care to play dice with your financial future? There goes your retirement, chump. All your hard work, down the toilet.

I don't recall consenting to give Equifax all my information. They invaded my privacy and then gave my information away to criminals.

Personally, if I have to go through identity theft hell at some point down the line, then it seems only right that Equifax people have to suffer, too, because that's not my cross, it's theirs. The amount of time I am willing to spend cleaning up Equifax's mess is zero. I will not lift a finger to resolve any kind of identity theft problem. Equifax makes me whole. There is no other way. If my dinner gets taken away by identity theft, then they feed me. My life is not about cleaning up after Equifax; otherwise it is no life. But if millions of people suffer identity theft, then our entire financial system is called into question.

The proper response, which would have already been taken by a benevolent dictator, is to make credit card applications much, much more difficult. Credit card, loan, or any kind of financial account application must be done in person and require a DNA sample, retina scan, or something else that is very individualized and extremely difficult to fake. That is the simple, elegant, permanent solution, not just to Equifax, but to all the other scandals that have hit our sorry, stupid, negligent and corrupt business community, driven by greed and completely unconcerned about the country.

However, none of the above is going to happen, because the Republican Congress is just as stupid as the business community. Maybe more so.

Congress has proven again and again it is incapable of acting, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that action is justified. Marijuana was proven non-toxic and harmless way back in the early 1970s, during the Nixon administration, and due to stupidity, Congress never did anything about the laws that equate pot with heroin.

So, is social collapse on the horizon? No, because the American people have a high tolerance for pain and suffering, a limited memory, and are easily distracted by social issues like bathrooms, prayer and abortion. What will happen is that millions of "nobodies" like myself will go through identity theft hell, and nothing will be done, and there will be a lot of hand-wringing but ultimately no changes, and the cycle will continue with more scandals, more data-leaks in the future, and future generations will deal with the problem as well. Because stupid rules the land.

In the end, the only hope for H. Sapiens is that genetic engineering creates a smarter species, capable of seeing through obvious lies and falsehoods. Then the electorate might become capable of electing good people into public office. Such a species might demand more accountability from the corporations that control so much of our lives. But today's people? They just roll over and take it, again and again. They focus on what's important, like Hillary Clinton's email server, or Anthony Weiner's weiner.