I can't even imagine the hassle that would be. My kids were both given SS#s after birth. I'd have a lot of paperwork to change.
These days, the citizens are trained to expect government intrusion into their lives from the moment of birth. It's becoming increasingly common to fingerprint babies. Microchips like they put in dogs and cats can't be far behind. Surely the next generation will have DNA samples on file and a GPS in their neck. (Remember the clever way they trained a whole generation of kids to endure arduous commutes by calling it "busing" and claiming it was really in the interest of racial integration?) If you change a child's name today I'm sure you have to go to court and file the necessary documents just as if it were an adult. Oddly, the only bastion of tradition that is allowed to proceed under common law in the U.S. with no oversight by the legal system is a woman taking her husband's surname. And even that doesn't work reliably. My wife was off the Social Security radar for 35 years because she worked for a municipal government that did not collect SS taxes. But when she turned 55 and their system began to attempt to send her notices advising her of her (non-existent) pension, instead she got a notice saying that there was a discrepancy between her SSA file and her IRS file. She had to dig up our 20-year-old marriage certificate and go stand in line for two hours while they figured out what to do with it.
I was thinking that too. "Surely it couldn't be any harder than changing my last name" Yeah, wrong. They'd ask for adoption papers, but there are none. We just wanna change it. :shrug: I had a friend who was named Mary Beth at birth. Three months later her parents decided they hated it and changed it. But that was 40 years ago, and the gvmt probably was as involved.
Not refugees, just serfs. The U.S. has created a modern version of the old feudal system, with corporations as the new aristocracy.
Probably the subject for a new thread, but I'm warming to corpocracy since they started demanding a global energy policy. I know it's motiated by self-interest, as they are only wanting a world in which commerce is possible in 50 years, but at least it is rational. What an irony for the Greens if their old enemy Corporates saved the world.
