Anyway, with your intelligence obviously not in question, I wonder why you don't see the danger here.
Once the transactions are able to be tracked anon falls apart. Being reduced to the identity protection that Bitcoin provides is not acceptable if someone's life was counting on their anonymity staying secure for more than just 10 years or whatever short time it ends up being.
Because there is no reason to believe that the transactions are able to be tracked, nor that any better system currently exists at a holistic level. See items #1, #2, and #3 above, along with what I said about AM's later comments. He's clearly stated that the best anon method available today is Monero, and that he is happy to personally use it himself.
For example:
I am happy Monero exists. I support it (we've been using XMR.to for example). And if ever I produce something better, I hope the Monero devs join in the fun. We are all in this for the same reasons. No need to be exclusionary and selfish. There is plenty of profit and area responsibility opportunity for all who are talented. Let's go!
Now, is there something that can be done with Monero itself so that it doesn't have such a short shelf life??
I'm not even sure what to make about this comment about shelf life. This is not a dried food product in a box. Development is ongoing and improvements continue to be made. A clear defficiency, for example, are leakages that occur due to no IP network obfuscation at all. That's why we are tracking the i2p developments on their C++ implementation and plan to integrate that ASAP. (BTW, did anyone see that Bitcoin Core recently got the ability to seamlessly run as a Tor hidden service? Nice work by the Bitcoin devs!) These are not perfect solutions of course, and we're all hard at work to make them even better.
No one is promising that any specific technology is the ultimate solution for all time. If they do, grab your wallet and run the other way.