The "Government needs to know all about you" is a technocratic conceit less than 100 years old.
I remember, as a kid, when Canada rolled out the Social Insurance Number, only for tax use! Now it's used for everything.
And later... health cards! Used to be, you'd just wander into a hospital.
Now you need endless id for everything.
50 years only!
It's really absurd.
what is your main concern about requiring IDs to do things like obtain health care?
Re:USPS In-Person Identity Proofing
by ComposedPattern on Thursday September 21, 2023 @10:38PM
(#37607225)
Everyone deserves healthcare. It doesn't matter who they are.
Re:USPS In-Person Identity Proofing
by beanjuiceII on Thursday September 21, 2023 @11:51PM
(#37607623)
True, tho I wonder if there are enough people to provide it
That's a very strong and parochial claim.
Good, reliable, trustworthy, functioning government has existed for between 5,000 and 10,000 years depending on which anthropology you follow.
For almost all of that time, governments have had scant legibility into the size or makeup of their population, barring a rather crude census every now and then.
Identity at individual granularity happened practically yesterday, and is still a project in progress for many nation states. It's really a function of global travel, banking systems, modern social welfare benefits and healthcare.
A well designed government does not need micro-relations with each and every citizen, but works fine in aggregation, devolved autonomous subsystems and heuristics.
The "Government needs to know all about you" is a technocratic conceit less than 100 years old.