[jerhinesmith]

Even a decent ORM will only partially solve the problem.

For example, if you have an :active named_scope in rails that respects an object's active state, you still need to remember to do MyObject.active.find everywhere you want to exclude inactive results (meaning it's still just as easy to forget it). This got a little bit better with default_scope, but now you have the problem of trying to jump through hoops in the 1 or 2 cases where you do want to bring back inactive objects -- which, in my opinion, still imposes some sort of tax (albeit a slightly more readable one).

Granted, I'm still fairly new to rails, so if there really is a way to just be able to do MyObject.find in all cases where I want to ignore inactive records and MyObject.include_inactive.find in the 1 or 2 edge cases where its needed, then I will readily concede the absence of said tax.