A lot of magazines try to structure their stories as fables (Forbes?).  We like that when the fable aligns with our morality ;-).

FWIW, it sounds like this story was structured as a gee-whiz fable of the future, when we know it should have stronger shades of grey.

(there are gee-whiz stories out ther, PO just isn't one of them)

Yes, I can indeed dig it!  I am a sixty-year-old Sixties person who happens to despise  most 'modern' things like ATMs, cell phones, i-pods, plasma TV, and all young males with military crew cuts  who wear theses gang-banger  baggy jeans that are eight sizes too big. Call me prejudice, but I think the worst of the Sixties was better than the best of the 'oughts', i.e., the 2000 to 2010 period. Hell, I am one of a steadily dying breed that is capable of using a slide rule (you know, those sticks with little numbers on them).  

But I realize oldsters have been saying the same sort of thing since the time of the ancient Greeks. However, I think what is different here is that most young people have an almost wired-in acceptance of State authority, no doubt a product of the current public school system plus TV shows like 'Cops'. It really make my skin crawl when I see young people so willingly subjecting themselves to searches at checkpoints, fully believing that such is for their own safety against this amorphous threat called 'terrorism'.

It will only get worse, that is until things get so bad that they have no place to go but to only get better. But who knows, maybe there is a movement out there, totally invisible to us older ones, that has the will and wherewithal to pull us out of the hole. But I will not hold my breath.