It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be unable to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong to. In t

It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be unable to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong to. In the U.S. the problem is not proving basic things, but preventing the government from building up a huge profile of everything about you, from what you ate and where you've been to the size and color of your underpants. Even that wouldn't be such a big deal if the government wasn't ultra paranoid and just constantly spied indiscriminately on everyone, actively trying to use that information against you, under the auspices of "protecting" you. Bureaucracy in the U.S. is actually pretty simple and straightforward, and it works. For example, every time I compare how easy it is to buy, insure, register a vehicle, and renew its registration in the States, and then compare with a certain country in central Europe, I just want to scream and tear my hair out. In the States, it's a straightforward, practical, uncomplicated matter: after all, owning and driving a vehicle isn't a big deal, and shouldn't be one. The European country in question? WOE TO YOU: prepare for a protracted ping-pong between the local police station, the central police authority (ministry of internal affairs), the insurance company, back to the local police authority, then the technical inspection station, then the local police authority, and let's not forget at least two trips to a notary public. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention at least one trip to the tax authorities. Payment to authorities? Not before you've been sent several times to a local newspaper kiosk, after waiting for up to two and a half hours in a line, to buy special government stamps, which then only the bureaucrat is allowed to affix and annul with a seal on the actual documents. And the entire time they all arrogantly stare at you wide-eyed, "but sir, what are you getting upset over?!?" Oh yeah, and your documents, like a birth certificate, aren't allowed to be older than six months. I mean that's "completely logical", because we all know that the place and time of one's birth is an ever changing variable, right? And yet, my driver's license which I've had since well into the last century isn't up for renewal until 2069... but get this, if you're tech savvy enough and get a login and a password(!!!) in a special governmental database (only in person at a physical teller, of course!), you can print some of these documents at home, SHA-1 check summed with a crypto key from the ministry of internal affairs, gratis... super consistent and fair to all citizens, huh? In some things, U.S. is light years ahead. And when I see how easy it is to do things like that in the U.S. I feel I'm completely justified to question why the process cannot be as simple and as uncomplicated as it is in some other countries. In Singapore for example, it's enough to fill out one paper and get a company registered in up to 15 minutes; if it works there, it can work everywhere.