  In the ballistic limit, the Landauer conductance steps of a mesoscopic
quantum wire have been explained by coherent and dissipationless transmission
of individual electrons across a one-dimensional barrier. This leaves untouched
the central issue of conduction: a quantum wire, albeit ballistic, has finite
resistance and so must dissipate energy. Exactly HOW does the quantum wire shed
its excess electrical energy? We show that the answer is provided, uniquely, by
many-body quantum kinetics. Not only does this inevitably lead to universal
quantization of the conductance, in spite of dissipation; it fully resolves a
baffling experimental result in quantum-point-contact noise. The underlying
physics rests crucially upon the action of the conservation laws in these open
metallic systems.
