Civil asset forfeiture is horrible and we should get rid of it.<p>On a different note, my takeaway from this story: pick your battles.<p>Sure, you <i>can</i> go into an airport with $11k in cash. Maybe you&#x27;re a Sikh and you want to carry a kirpan [0] into the airport, or you&#x27;re a high school kid working on a science project and you have a bunch of C-cell batteries taped together with wires hanging out the ends of them (experience talking).<p>You&#x27;re probably increasing your odds of getting stopped. Sometimes it&#x27;s worth it, maybe for strong religious beliefs, or you feel strongly about the exercise of your democratic rights. But fighting the collective weight of &quot;normal&quot;, shared perception, culture, etc. is costly. You&#x27;ll be delayed, people will ask lots of annoying questions, in general you&#x27;ll expend a lot of energy on stuff that is in some sense, entirely avoidable.<p>I felt this way recently when trying to get a loan for a house from Wells Fargo. Quit my W2 a few months ago for a large contract. I couldn&#x27;t convince the bank my income was solid even though the payment was about 1&#x2F;8th of my taxable income and I had almost the entire mortgage balance in semi-liquid retirement accounts. Sometimes the message the world sends is, &quot;conform&quot;.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kirpan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kirpan</a>