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Even while the Mayan protest that their calendar is cyclical, another signal that the world will sink into catastrophe in 2012 has emerged. As pointed out in a recent New York Times article about Visa’s transaction fees, plastic payment for transactions is expected to overtake cash that year. That seems like enough to sustain an image of the earth splitting in two and swallowing us into its molten heart, hippie and Republican alike. No one will be spared. Even if we do survive, the moment that last jerk slides his debit card through the POS machine to tip the balance, a cascade of events that begin with the IRS establishing a paramilitary wing and end with bar codes tattooed on the back of every American’s neck. I also see us wearing matching glittery jump suits; silver for boys and yellow for girls, I imagine.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a chilling statement on privacy rights recently. He told a CNBC interviewer, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This is a considerably frightening sentiment from the man who runs a company so thoroughly involved in everyday lives. It’s on the level of Obama holding a press conference in military fatigues to reveal his new Brown Shirt program.

More superficially, it’s a glib, disingenuous statement. It is true that as a society, we agree that each of us will follow the law. But this is accompanied by an equally fundamental understanding that absolutely none of us does all of the time. Technically, eating a couple grapes in the grocery store during a shopping trip is stealing. You’re meant to claim as income on your taxes the $150 you won at the slots on a trip to Vegas. Sodomy was illegal in most states until the Supreme Court intervened in 2003. Cocaine and marijuana are illegal, but our last three presidents all copped to doing one or both.

All of us have done something to skirt the law from time to time; the final passage into adulthood is the realization that society operates on a wink and a nudge here or there. We are all, at our core, heathens and it’s miraculous that we’re able to control ourselves to the vast degree that we do. Those who don’t grasp this are naive Boy Scouts who undermine our collective agreement to look the other way on  each other’s bad behavior in anticipation or reflection of our own. This is why Ned Flanders is such a wonderful character and why the Saudi religious police are losing power.

A few Flanders here or there are harmless. Visa and Google are not. While we may scoff at or even pity the average human who denies himself completely in order to follow the letter of the law and perhaps tattle on those of us who choose otherwise, these two firmly entrenched corporations have the power to make real decisions for us. If (when) we reach the point where there is nothing but plastic and every transaction can be tracked, there won’t be any decision among the individuals whether to claim that 150 bucks from the slots as income. If Google decides that only criminals need privacy, the possibility of confidentiality between any of us will be stripped and we will lose our very personal decision of whether to trust another person.

It’s not that we as a society or as individuals will lose our desire to choose whether we follow the law. That comes from a deeply primitive place. Instead, these options will be largely lost as the breathing room between laws and Law becomes a vacuum. What results constitutes a de facto loss of free will.

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