Real world licenses and ID's have the added secondary (or primary) benefit of enabling greater economic activity. One can leave the country with a passport, drive a car with a drivers license, grasp medical services with a medicare card, ect. These licenses and IDs are an advantage that lift you up in society.
Digital IDs offer the ability to go 'off-grid' and hide in humility and also to be tracked and seen everywhere you go, without public awareness of it. It has the strongest cultural implications in the US, without a clear advantage to foreigners.
An e-commerce license or a software engineer's certificate based on a paper test that you must upkeep every 5 years or so, would be a largely unpopular, but basically effective way of getting just enough identity out of the people who are paying for stuff and making money on the internet to ID them, when required. You would have to show it makes the user more employable and grant them better access to domestic internet services, as part of the benefits of becoming 'vaguely certified'.
Do we really need more online identity though. The five eyes see it all. Personally, I don't want to hide and I don't want to see what everyone's doing. Let's just get on with trading code and making this whole internet work better.
Digital IDs offer the ability to go 'off-grid' and hide in humility and also to be tracked and seen everywhere you go, without public awareness of it. It has the strongest cultural implications in the US, without a clear advantage to foreigners.
An e-commerce license or a software engineer's certificate based on a paper test that you must upkeep every 5 years or so, would be a largely unpopular, but basically effective way of getting just enough identity out of the people who are paying for stuff and making money on the internet to ID them, when required. You would have to show it makes the user more employable and grant them better access to domestic internet services, as part of the benefits of becoming 'vaguely certified'.
Do we really need more online identity though. The five eyes see it all. Personally, I don't want to hide and I don't want to see what everyone's doing. Let's just get on with trading code and making this whole internet work better.